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Ed Tech must reads – column 18

First published in Campus Morning Mail on 18th Jan 2022

On Reading the Syllabus: A Pedagogical Thread from Twitter (@ec_leininger)

Academics often complain the students never read the unit outline, and from time to time a story will crop up about someone adding something quirky to get their students’ attention. Late last year a senior academic at the University of Tennessee posted a photo on Facebook of an unclaimed $50 note in a locker that he had included the code for in a boilerplate policy section about not making allowances for COVID. Better educators like Dr Liz Leininger were underwhelmed by this and shared this helpful thread about getting your students to read your syllabus by making it engaging and interactive instead.

Online Program Management Firms Are Thriving. And These Democrats Want Answers from The Chronicle of Higher Education

OPMs are third party providers that are increasingly partnering with Australian universities to build, deliver and administer their online course offerings. This article is American in focus so there are undoubtedly differences in systems and context but it does bring to light some questions that are being asked in the halls of power about these relationships.

We know why you hate online learning – and it has nothing to do with quality from Edugeek Journal

Nearly two years into the pandemic and we are hearing a growing chorus in some circles of people who are just tired of everything to do with online and remote learning and want to return to the old ways. These discussions are frequently wrapped up in rhetoric around the superiority of in-person teaching. Matt Croslin from EduGeek Journal dove into the research literature and spent a little time exploring the validity of these claims.

Learn programming in a codable music video from TikTok

This is a basic tool in some ways but I’m a sucker new interactive applications of coding and video in the service of better learning and teaching, so here we are. The latest music video from Doja Cat for her new song Woman allows people to change a number of variables coded in CSS, Javascript and Python at different points that change the appearance of things in the video. It’s a fun way to introducing programming structures and concepts to a new audience of learners. The joy of the person discussing it in this TikTok video is something that needed to be shared as well.

How to win at Wordle using linguistic theory from The Guardian

I recently saw Wordle described as the sourdough starter of the Omicron era – the new craze people are latching on to as a social distraction from the world. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a simple, free, one-a-day word puzzle with elements of the old Mastermind game. The addition of a simple share function that lets people show their success without spoiling the answer has led to an explosion of Twitter posts with grids of green, yellow and white squares. This article from David Shariatmadari explores some handy linguistic strategies for Wordle success.

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AI CMM digital literacy Wordpress

Ed Tech must reads – column 17

First published in Campus Morning Mail Tuesday 7th Dec, 2021

Three Lenses on Lurking: Making Sense of Digital Silence from International Perspectives in Online Instruction (paywall)

The practice of reading the discussion in an online forum without engaging with it is sometimes referred to as ‘lurking’. I’ve never been a fan of this term as it casts a shadow on what can be perfectly reasonable behaviour. Kuhn et al essentially agree in this thoughtful chapter which examines lurking in online learning spaces – where ideally there is a greater need for students to be active participants. They offer some valuable nuance to the types of ‘lurker’ behaviour that offer opportunities to rethink how we create welcoming spaces for students.

Aussie gov takes on trolls from Vertical Hold: Behind the Tech news podcast

Given the current government’s track record in the technology/defamation space, it’s unsurprising that the recent announcement of plans to hold social media platforms more accountable for defamation on social media platforms have a few people wondering what the end game is. Monash Uni’s Emily van der Nagel shares her thoughts on these proposed changes relating to privacy, power and moves toward ‘banning anonymity’ (2:38 – 18:22)

Open/Technology in Education, Society and Scholarship Association Journal from OTESSA (open access)

This shiny new Canadian Open Access journal comes from OTESSA, an organisation formed “with the goal to provide an inviting community to drive innovation, research, and practice in areas where either technology or openness intersect with education, research, and, more broadly, within society.” The first edition covers topics ranging across video-conferencing technologies, online faculty development for effective graduate supervision, and Open Educational Resources in mathematics and learning communities.

50 Most Common WordPress Errors and How to Fix Them from Beginner’s guide for WordPress

WordPress has quickly become a ubiquitous platform for blogging and web publishing and it often fills the gaps when officially sanctioned institutional education technologies can’t quite do what educators want. Skimming through this handy list for troubleshooting WordPress for beginners, I recognised at least a dozen things that I could/should do to quickly fix my own site.

Dream app for easy AI art from Wombo

A few months ago, I shared some information about VQGAN+CLIP tools that let you use AI to generate art from basic text prompts. These are great but can be complicated, so it is little surprise that there are now simple apps that let you do this in a couple of clicks. The outputs don’t go through as many iterations as the full tools do and there is speculation that the company sells the ‘artworks’ as NFTs (the 21st century Tulip mania) but if that doesn’t bother you, it’s a fun tool that lets you download your images in seconds.

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academic developer academic development academics CMM higher education pedagogy teaching

Ed Tech must reads – Column 16

First published in Campus Morning Mail on Tuesday 30th November 2021

Edtech people weekend challenge – Twitter discussion

I found this stimulating discussion started by @BenPatrickWill on the weekend. “If you (hypothetically) had 15 mins to address your university senior managers about the future of edtech, and it was your best chance to bring in some critical perspectives, what would you highlight?” If you’re a leader, and you ever wondered… (Or if you ever wondered what you’d say if you were trapped in a lift with them)

How to hold a better class discussion from The Chronicle of Higher Education

Class discussions can be a lottery – one day everyone is excited and engaged and the next, you struggle to extract one-word responses. Jay Howard shares some invaluable practical advice in this piece that draws on 30 years of research. Some top tips – put the work back onto the learners, ask more complex questions that support creativity, encourage students to call out great ideas from their peers.

 Why aren’t Professors taught to teach? from Tech & Learning

The fact that I thought twice about sharing this piece, which is fairly inoffensive in itself, says something about the politics around this in Higher Education. Institutions do, of course, offer a range of services and specialists that provide support to academics in teaching and ed tech – this is part of the work that I do and this is my community. This article asks the questions that I’ve been hearing a lot recently – are we doing enough and where do we go next?

Pedagogy for Higher Education Large Classes (PHELC) 2021 proceedings from PHELC (Open Access)

One of the areas where pedagogy/andragogy and technology enhanced learning veers dramatically away from K-12 learning is when it comes to large classes. The PHELC21 symposium was held in June and the full proceedings are now available. This collection of papers includes work on engagement, course redesign, problem-based learning at scale and drawing classes.

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ADDIE CMM ed tech edtech higher education Learning design Uncategorized

Ed Tech must reads – Column 15

First published in Campus Morning Mail on Tuesday 23rd Nov

Working paper: What does it cost to educate a university student in Australia from MCSHE & Pilbara Group

One of the common concerns raised (or benefits posited) around online and technology enhanced learning is that it is cheaper than face-to-face teaching and is introduced to cut costs rather than raise standards. People working in the space have argued for years that this isn’t the case (in either instance) but there has been something of a dearth of reliable data about the costs of teaching in HE. This working paper from UniMelb’s Centre for the Study of Higher Education, in partnership with the Pilbara Group, suggests in proud academic tradition that ‘it depends’ – based on degree level and mode. The paper also delves into a range of other factors including discipline, campus location and funding clusters.

Is the ADDIE model outdated or still relevant? From TaughtUp

When I started working in the learning design space, the ADDIE model (Analysis – Design – Development – Implementation – Evaluation) was somewhat considered the be-all and end-all. It offers a useful set of steps for thinking about the creation of a learning resource or activity but also seemed as much a linear project management system as anything else. This article outlines the history of this model and what has come to replace it as development has moved to more iterative AGILE-oriented approaches like SAM (Successive Approximation Model). As with many things, it still has its place.

Digital higher education: a divider or bridge builder? Leadership perspectives on edtech in a COVID-19 reality from International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education

This article examines the use of education technologies starting out from a position that vendors overhype their products but it eventually comes to the conclusion commonly held by people working in the sector that this doesn’t actually matter and a judicious combination of technology, pedagogy and capability building can in fact make a difference in education. Laufer et al. interview and survey Higher Ed leaders from 24 countries for their perspectives on the impact of education technologies in the last two years, covering opportunities and barriers for both individuals and institutions. Well worth a read for the big picture overview.

Webinar – Pathways to Learning Design (and more) – skill or luck? Thursday 25/11 12 noon AEDT

ASCILITE’s TELedvisors Network wraps up the 2021 webinar series with a bang, with Prof. Michael Sankey (CDU) and Jack Sage (JCU) sharing the findings of research they undertook this year into what it takes for people to enter the growing profession of Learning Design (and adjacent roles) in Australian Higher Ed and what the future looks like for these kinds of roles.

Science Fiction is a Luddite Literature from Medium

Respected author in the tech ethics and society space, Cory Doctorow, makes some valuable connections between the Luddite movement of the early 1800s and some key tenets of science fiction – namely that it is generally all about the meaning of the impact of technology on the world than the tools themselves.

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ASCILITE 2021 Conference Day 3 – notes on the fly

(Oops, I thought I’d published this on the day)

Lines of thought: the emergence of meaning through collaborations and remix – Wendy Taleo and Sarah Honeychurch

Looking at learning with technology through the lens of creative projects

Remixed into representation in colours

Remixing the collaborative poem into music

Sustainable learning design in large transformational teaching and learning initiatives – Courtney Shalavin and Elaine Huber

Birgit acknowledges that describing the spread of innovation as a virus probably isn’t the best thing to do these days 🙂

Exploring industry-university partnerships in the creation of short courses and micro-credentials – Rachel Fitzgerald and Henk Huijser

This feels like another one of these discussions that haven’t changed for a decade. I’m glad that it is still on the agenda but is this a fundamental flaw of research – a hesitancy to take a position and move forward?

I asked Henk why movement has been so slow in this space – he feels it comes down to a lack of shared understanding and challenges for unis in dealing with the business models needed

Lots of rich discussion – this is clearly something that still has relevance to a lot of people.

Creating presence, currency and connection in digital learning with video blogs – Jo Elliott and Chie Adachi

Reflection on the design process

https://www.deakin.edu.au/course/master-digital-learning-leadership#tab__1–2

Nice

And that’s it for me – sadly, the real world is calling.

Thanks to everyone that has shared their ideas and work, it has been great. Thanks also to ASCILITE for putting this on.

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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

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

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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

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AR/VR/XR CMM education education design professional development

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.

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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.

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assessment CMM edvisor Learning design simulation

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.