ascilite 2006 conference podcasts

Do academics need to be visionaries to keep pace in the current learning environment? Margaret Maag is continually looking to challenge the traditional landscape of higher education in order to facilitate and enhance students’ learning. What are the challenges along the way in using mobile learning applications, such as educational podcasts? Does this popular technology meet learner’s needs? How can we determine the impact of the mobile media revolution on instructional design and learning effectiveness? What are the ways that technology is connecting us as human beings? Margaret answers these questions and more in this interesting discussion…

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Just what happens when you explore the intersections of spatiality, identity and online learning? Reem Al-Mahmood explores “spatial imaginings” to answer the question “what are people actually doing in learning environments?” Issues of learner identities and learning practices in relation to pedagogical, physical and online spaces/places were discussed with reference to three vignette’s that are part of a larger study within an Australian university. How can Reem’s emergent conceptual insights inform the work of educational designers? Listen to Reem’s interesting findings here…

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In response to the presentation entitled “ICT strategies and organisational change” in his questions, one of the delegates, Stephen Bright, appeared to feel strongly about the responsibility and the role of the champions of e-learning and adoptors of technology in the new VLE when he asked the question; “Do the champions of e-learning get any reward other than a good feeling?” The podcast team followed up on this comment.

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Allan Ellis and Stephen Rowe Southern Cross University talk with Allan Carrington about the roll out of real time elearning using Elluminate Live at their institution. They talked about some challenging things like

• An Australian Elluminate “Elluminati” – a community of practice
• Audiographic Conferencing history at Southern Cross
• The importance is how to use it – the pedagogy
• Need for research about the baggage people bring to using audiographic conference
• How people have to change.
• What’s the penalty for trying to do the old stuff the new way
• The need to look at the space people learn in including virtual
• How to use the technology and process
• We should stop using the term classroom – using virtual spaces in non distance environments
• How to help time-poor academics
• Students are pushing this technology

Please add your comments in the blog about this new field of elearning

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Elearning is often seen as synonymous with student-centred learning. But many teachers new to elearning often ask, ‘What’s my role in all of this?’ Jacquie McDonald’s presentation, based on her recently submitted PhD thesis, places the teacher very much in the elearning framework. Whether it be setting roles and responsibilities, facilitating exchanges towards higher order thinking or stepping back so as not to ‘kill’ the discussion, the skilled facilitator plays a key role in both the design and implementation of elearning.

Jacquie, an instructional designer at University of Southern Queensland, talks with us about all these issues, as well as the tension often exerienced between one’s philosophical beliefs, the needs of learners and the ‘materials’ that are produced. We’re looking forward to talking with ‘Dr Jacquie’ in ASCILITE 2007!

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Podcaster researchers Anthony Chan and Mark Lee (CSU) together with Catherine McLoughlin (ACU) and a group of their second year students from Charles Sturt University gave a particularly dynamic presentation in which they showcased the findings of a year long project in which a group of second year undergraduate students is placed in charge of producing a series of educational podcasts. In this podcast we hear from the students themselves about the benefits of the experience, as well as from Anthony and Mark, the masterminds and facilitators of the research and teaching.

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That is the question that Stephen Sheeley was posing in the opening session of the “Technologies, instructional design and teaching practices section”. This session was standing room only and had participants eagerly involved in exploring this issue.

• Why are we focussed on preserving and translating materials to online environments rather than transforming to a new environment?
• How is this limiting our vision?
• What are some ways to influence this discourse?
• What are the differences between creating an equal and an equivelant experience?
• How are student expectations and institutional change involved in this issue?

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Team building skills are one of those things that everyone wants – our universities prioritise them through graduate attributes and employers almost universally demand them in job advertisements. But how do you teach them – or more importantly, can you teach them?

Joe Luca from Edith Cowan University gave an interesting – and hilarious in parts – presentation about his work using roleplay to help students improve their teamwork skills. He stresses the importance of an authentic, contextualised experience – and a good dose of fun to maximise engagement.

He takes it one step further by getting the students to demonstrate their developing skills in eportfolios, using reflection and SAOs (and we’re not talking about biscuits!!) that can later be used in job interviews.

If you want to try roleplaying in your classes, Joe has promised some resources over the next few days – stay tuned.

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Day one keynote one and what a keynote. Mike Spector of the Learning Systems Institute of Florida State University began ASCILITE 2006 discussing the reality check the USA has had with the good news of 3% in 1994 has jumped to 94% in 2005 for the take up of technology in schools, but with the not so good news that there has been little change to the quality of learning outcomes.

In this podcast Mike talked about

• Why some other countries are seeing significant improvement in learning as a result of educational technology and what might some differences be between those countries and the USA.
• The exciting and huge change to teaching and learning about to be undertaken by Indonesia, with tens of thousands of new teachers needed and how technology is the only way they can do it
• Then things got really “deep” and Mike shared his personal adventure with D.E.E.P. which stands for Dynamic Enhanced Evaluation of Problem Based Learning. How it works and how it can help educators improve learning outcomes. Here you can find out more about DEEP.
• He shared about how there is research on how to integrate story based instruction and the plans to link this all together and what to expect in the near future.

Mike’s PowerPoint slides for this presentation can be found here they are well worth reflection and comment – so please add some comments here on the blog. Also please subscribe to these podcasts and experience some of the knowledge construction from this great conference.

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Podcasting is one of the ‘hottest’ subjects in Learning and Teaching at the moment. However there is not a lot of research and information yet on how to design and produce educational podcasts i.e. podcasts that teach. Allan Carrington of the University of Adelaide has developed an interactive learning module called “From Podcasting to Learncasting” and it does just that. It also introduces a creative “Podagogical Framework”. If you are interested in educational podcasting then please experience this Learning Module and post your comments here.