2017: ASCILITE 2017 Conference Proceedings: Me, Us, IT!

ASCILITE Conference - Full Papers

• Using cultural-historical activity theory to describe a university-wide blended learning initiative

  Anselm Paul

  Institution-wide evaluations of Blended Learning implementations are rare. Even less common are evaluations that report the sociocultural context of the implementation. Recently, an Australian university in the western region of Victoria embarked on an initiative to blend all course units over a three-year period. Stemming from a rigorous analysis of reporting documents and participantresearcher observations, an attempt has been made to describe the sociocultural context of this blended learning initiative through the lens of Engestrom’s Cultural-historical Activity Theory (CHAT). This description, along with the challenges surfaced will serve as a precursor to the university-wide impact evaluation of this blended learning initiative. The objective of the analysis was to reify the complex processes, intricate relationships and dynamic environmental elements, which tend not to be captured by impact evaluations. Understanding what exactly is going on will enable the University to situate evaluation findings in the context of factors that might have helped or hampered the achievement of outcomes, and remediate process-related problems in a timely manner. Amidst the flurry of focused and coordinated blended learning activities, eight key process-related challenges emerged: Staff Capacity, Engagement, Deployment, Workload, Technological Issues, Project Management, Communication and Unit Stability. These challenges could potentially make or break ‘the Blend’ if not adequately addressed. This paper highlights the value of process evaluations for online and blended learning implementations and argues for such evaluations to be grounded in ontological realities reflected on accountability reports and observational data.

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• Flipping diverse classrooms: Instructor experiences and perceptions

  Ekaterina Pechenkina

  Flipped Classroom is a pedagogical approach in which all or some of direct instruction is moved outside of the face-to-face environment to dedicate more in-class time to ‘hands-on’, experimental and engaging activities. Usually enabled by educational technology, the Flipped Classroom approach draws on the ‘active learning’ philosophy which implies that students must share responsibility for their learning with their instructors, resulting in more impactful learner behaviours. Considering university classrooms are increasingly diverse, with international students forming a significant cohort of learners, instructor perceptions of internationals students in Flipped Classrooms are of interest. This is particularly important because international students, especially those from Asian countries, can be perceived by instructors as ‘passive’ learners’ regardless of students’ actual skills, learning preferences and goals. This presumed ‘passivity’ may clash with instructors’ goals, potentially creating tensions-filled dynamics between instructors and international students in Flipped Classrooms. The proposed article explores university instructors’ perceptions of international students in technology-enabled Flipped Classrooms to understand how these perceptions may influence instructors’ choices for the design of the flip. Findings demonstrate that while some instructors view international students as a barrier to impactful Flipped Classroom, others draw on their classroom’s diversity, using it as a source of inspiration, and designing the flip with international students in mind.

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• A cross-disciplinary evaluation of digitally recorded feedback in higher education

  Michael Phillips, Tracii Ryan, Michael Henderson

  Research demonstrates that assessment feedback created using audio, video, and screencast recordings can offer advantages over text-based feedback. However, the majority of research and experience in this domain has largely been limited to a single disciplinary or cohort context. This project aimed to empirically investigate if recorded feedback (i.e. audio, video, and screencast) could be effectively implemented across different contexts, including disciplines. As part of this, teaching staff from five discrete subjects provided digitally recorded feedback to students on at least one assessment task. Assessment types included various forms of written assignments, completed by individuals or groups of students. This paper reports on survey data collected from 351 students who received recorded feedback or text-based feedback. Survey respondents were enrolled in five subjects across four disciplines (Education, Pharmacy, Engineering, and Management). To triangulate the survey findings, interview data from nine students are also included. Overall, the findings indicate that students in all disciplines found digitally recorded feedback to be more satisfying, more useful, and more engaging than text-based feedback alone. However, these outcomes differed across contexts; results tended to be elevated in subjects with smaller cohorts, and when richer audiovisual modalities were used. In two of the cases students, while still being overall positive, indicated that the feedback was less clear, usable and satisfying than indicated in other cases. These differences are explored and issues of teacher experience, cohort size, group assessment, and disciplinary cognate traditions are considered.

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• Analysing the learning pathways of students in a large flipped engineering course

  Carl Reidsmea, Hassan Khosravi, Melanie Fleming, Lydia Kavanagh, Nicholas Achilles, Esther Fink

  Recent advancements in educational technologies (learning management systems, online discussion forums, peer-learning tools) coupled with new methods of course delivery (e.g. blended, flipped, MOOCs) provide significant opportunities for universities to deliver challenging, high quality, yet engaging curriculum for students. In this paper, we examine the variations and similarities of student’s approaches to learning (learning pathways) by examining how well they performed in a large (N ~ 1000 student) first year engineering flipped classroom. The analysis focused on student’s performance in their assessment (formative and summative) as well as their online interaction with a range of tools purposely built to support students through peer learning and acquisition of resources and expertise. Analysis using k-means clustering reveals that students do in fact adopt a variety of successful pathways through the course. The unique aspects of this work lie in the use of analytics algorithms that whilst perhaps routinely utilised in data mining, are not as well utilised in better understanding patterns (successful or otherwise) of student interactions within a technology enhanced active learning environment that integrates theory with engineering practice.

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• From how to why: Student experiences of a university’s technology-enhanced learning over 5 years

  Carol Russell

  This is a longitudinal case study of student perspectives on Western Sydney University’s strategic initiatives to promote technology-enhanced learning (TEL) from 2012 to 2017. The study analyses data from students throughout this period, and includes consideration of how the student experience is being shaped by academic and institutional support for TEL. Initially the University focus was on use of mobile technologies and ‘blended’ learning environments; as a platform for transforming pedagogy. In 2013, teaching staff and new undergraduate students were issued with tablet devices. As well as investing in the devices and supporting campus infrastructure, the institution also provided additional support for curriculum and staff development. For two years, students’ feedback about the tablets was overwhelmingly positive about their value for learning. In 2015, most undergraduates had tablet devices and TEL was becoming business as usual. However, the evaluation feedback that year showed that use of tablets had begun to decrease and there was a corresponding increase in use of smartphones. For some activities, laptops were preferred. In 2016, multiple types of device were issued to students, with some disciplines choosing laptops and in 2017 the University provided free digital textbooks instead of devices. Students’ use of different devices for learning activity has been shifting and evidence gathered internally from students and staff has played a role in adapting to this. While TEL strategies differ between universities, the analysis provides an example of how systematic evaluation evidence can support systemic adaptation as the learning technology environment changes.

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• Women and rural people’s participation in tertiary education through Internet resources in India: A narrative inquiry

  Sandeep Sandhu

  India has a large formal higher education system, however the enrolment of women and rural people in universities is not substantial. Women enrolment in tertiary education was reported only 41.5% of the total enrolment in the academic year 2010-2011 and only 7% population in rural areas have a higher education. Many socio-cultural barriers prevent people from accessing higher education in India. The integration of the Internet into the higher education sector has the potential to improve access to tertiary education in India regardless gender and area. Using personal narrative and interview data, this article explores how Internet resources can be used to enhance women and rural people’s participation in tertiary education in India.

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• It takes a village: Supporting the integration of digital textbooks in higher education

  Debborah Smith

  Digital textbooks now incorporate various technological enhancements, and offer many opportunities for learning and teaching in higher education. Despite some enthusiasm for this medium, lecturers tend not to integrate the extra activities into their courses preferring instead to simply have them available as optional extra activities for students. One reason for this barrier to use is the time and effort required to integrate technology into the curriculum in a meaningful way, and lecturers may feel they lack the necessary knowledge to do this effectively. Despite the existence of institutional support to assist educators with technology enhanced learning, the services don’t always align with what faculty want or need. As a result, there have been calls to improve staff training and professional development. This paper presents a theorised inquiry into educators’ reflections on the integration of digital textbooks using Mishra & Koehler’s TPACK framework as an underpinning theory. The findings suggest the need for training and support that is individualised to instructors’ specific needs, and allows for increased collaboration between various stakeholders. It is concluded that professional development that focusses on the development of TPACK, and operates within a collaborative and context-specific learning community could support the increased uptake of digital textbooks in higher education.

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• A learning analytics view of students’ use of self-regulation strategies for essay writing

  Kelly Tresize, Paula de Barba, David Jennens, Alexander Zarebski, Robert Russo, Gregor Kennedy

  Essay writing is a fundamental part of higher education. Students’ use of self-regulatory skills, such as time management and planning and writing strategies, while writing essays predicts better writing quality. Current characterisations of the relationship between self-regulation and essay writing are limited by the difficulty of assessing self-regulation in real-life essay writing contexts. This paper reports on a novel approach to examine students’ use of self-regulation strategies in a real-life setting, using learning analytics. Four case studies are presented to illustrate similarities and differences in students’ use of time management, planning and writing strategies. Participants managed their time in very different ways to complete the assignment. They were active over a different number of days, engaged in sessions of different durations, and at different times of the day. The participants used a variety of approaches to their writing: one participant started early and allowed editing time, another typed gradually over a number of days, and two participants waited until the due date to complete the essay, with varying amounts of editing. Findings from this research contribute to a novel detailed empirical evidence of different essay preparation behaviour in real-life settings. After further studies with a variety of essay types and student samples, there may be significant value in using the approached outlined in this paper as the basis of tools they provide students with advice and support in their essay preparation.

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• Recipes for institutional adoption of a teacher-driven learning analytics tool: Case studies from three Australian universities

  Danny Liu, Elsuida Kondo, Kevin Samnick, Danny Liu, Deborah King, Adam Bridgeman

  The changing landscape of higher education is putting increasing strain on educators, leading to a diminishing ability to provide pedagogical and pastoral support to ballooning and diversifying cohorts. Learning analytics promises solutions to these challenges for educators, including by personalising learning support and experiences, streamlining data capture and analyses, and providing teachers with new, efficient teaching approaches. However, reports of these impacts, or widespread adoption of learning analytics, or even examples of cross-institutional collaboration are sparse. We argue that this may be because of a lack of educator-driven learning analytics tools that meet their felt needs, and present case studies from three Australian universities that have collaborated to implement such a tool. This tool, the Student Relationship Engagement System (SRES), empowers educators to collect, collate, analyse, and use student engagement and success data that they consider meaningful for their particular contexts. Developed by unfunded educators and widely adopted through collegiate recommendations, the SRES enables personalisation and targeting of student learning and support using relevant data, fostering positive student-teacher relationships and enhancing student engagement. Using the three case studies as a backdrop, we present a revised learning analytics adoption framework focussing on strategy, structure, support, and impact, and use this framework to systematically evaluate the implementation of the SRES at the three institutions to derive ‘recipes’ for adopting an educator-focussed learning analytics platform. We also discuss three core themes emerging from the case studies, around the needs of academics, the role of academic and educational developers, and flexible and agile information technology practices.

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• The changing nature of student engagement during a digital learning task

  Paul Wiseman, Jason Lodge, Amaël Arguel, Gregor Kennedy

  The construct of student engagement has been useful in understanding students' motivation in digital learning environments where they are required to show increased autonomy and independence in learning. Increasing clarity around this construct has allowed researchers to more accurately describe the nature of student engagement and the context in which it is being investigated. At a task-level, psychological states of engagement have been shown to be beneficial for students' positive learning experience, and performance. Despite this, we still lack knowledge of how these engaged states unfold or sustain during a learning task. In this paper we report on a qualitative study that investigated undergraduate students' experiences of psychological states of engagement in a digital learning task. Findings revealed that the three dimensions of engagement - cognition, affect, and behaviour - changed in intensity, with students experiencing both times of engagement and of not being engaged through the course of a digital learning task.

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• Constructive alignment of materials in tertiary programs

  Sook Jhee Yoon, Paul Gruba

  With the increasing adoption of blended learning, tertiary programs are becoming ever more varied and complicated. Laying at the heart of a range of complex learning activities, the role of blended materials once again comes into discussions concerning learning outcomes. But how do contemporary educators design and use blended materials to support pedagogical goals? In this study, we examine the constructive alignment of blended materials with the learning outcomes of modern language programs. Using pedagogical claims analyses with data gathered in two case studies, we found that educators tend to align materials to the curriculum, student interests, a research agenda and contemporary culture. We conclude our work with a discussion of constructive alignment of materials design and use in tertiary blended learning.

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