2016: ASCILITE 2016 Conference Proceedings: Show Me The Learning

ASCILITE Conference - Concise Papers

• Ethical considerations in the use of student data: International perspectives and educators' perceptions

  Hazel Jones

  As more emphasis is placed on the notion of 'show me the learning', institutions and individual staff are looking to the field of learning analytics to provide evidence of the learning that is happening. There is growing concern within the field that this evidence needs to be collected and utilised in ethical ways. However, there is a disconnect between national and international perspectives of the importance of institutional policy and guidelines regarding ethical use of student data, and the perceptions of academics about these guidelines. Although many universities are adopting such policies, results from a survey of academics suggest that such policy and guidelines are low on the ranking of factors that impact their current use and knowledge of learning analytics. Practical strategies are suggested to promote policy and guidelines, with appropriate support mechanisms that enable staff to embrace and adopt learning analytics through efficient, sustainable, and accessible processes.

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• The Rise of the Flip: Successfully engaging students in pre-class activities through the use of technology and a flipped classroom design template

  Sophia Karanicolas, Beth Loveys, Karina Riggs, Hayley McGrice, Catherine Snelling, Tracey Winning, Andrew Kemp

  Educational literature has acknowledged that teaching students who are prepared for class encourages student engagement and active learning. This is a core reason why the flipped classroom has risen to the forefront of effective learning strategies. However, key to the success of this strategy lies in the ability to motivate students to complete the necessary pre-class activities, posing a real issue in higher education settings. Teachers still ask 'How can I be sure if my students have completed their pre-class activities? How do I motivate students to want to engage in pre-class preparation?' This paper will demonstrate how mindfully designed pre-class learning approaches can successfully motivate students to complete pre-class activities that prepare them for active in-class learning. A pilot design template created by a community of colleagues, highlights how the use of simple technologies aligned to sound pedagogies, effectively engage students through accountability across a range of undergraduate courses.

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• Collective effervescence: Designing MOOCs for emotion and community

  Stephanie Kizimchuk, Katharina Freund, Margaret Prescott, Crystal McLaughlin, Inger Mewburn

  This paper shares the experiences of a course team in designing and delivering a massive open online course (MOOC). It offers insight into how their approach can help build learning communities and enhance pedagogy for online learning through a return to best practice. It will discuss how a combined approach of using a core site in conjunction with social media platforms can temporarily overcome the functional limitations of xMOOCs, more deeply engage students, and improve moderation. Central to this, the concepts of collective effervescence and radical inclusion are shown to be effective principles of course design which facilitate ongoing support networks - an effective and sustained strategy for combating pluralistic ignorance within research education contexts.

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• Individual differences in motivations for using social media among university students

  Wilfred Lau

  This study aimed to examine individual differences in motivations for using social media among university students. Motivations were measured with a validated social media motives scale. Participants were 348 undergraduate students studying in a university in Hong Kong. Results from a series of MANOVAs showed that there were in general no significant differences in the five motivation variables (entertainment, personal utility, information seeking, convenience, and altruism) with respect to a group of demographic variables (gender, faculty, year of study, experience in using computers or the Internet, and IT proficiency). However, given that students mostly agreed that they used social media to seek free information and to know what is happening recently, educators may encourage students to develop their own personal learning environments and integrate informal and formal learning activities with social media.

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• How to engage students in blended learning in a mathematics course: The students' views

  Birgit Loch, Rosy Borland, Nadezda Sukhorukova

  Blended learning strategies are employed at many Australian universities to modernise teaching approaches. However, blended learning implementations may not take into account the views of students during the development process. In this paper, we discuss how students think we, as educators, can engage students in both face-to-face learning and online learning, as components of blended learning. We also report on student suggestions regarding how to build in opportunities to recover if a student has either missed a class, or not completed time-critical online work before coming to a class taught in flipped mode. These are two of a set of seven questions we posed two years ago at this conference, in the context of teaching mathematics in blended mode.

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• Student Behavioural Engagement in Self-Paced Online Learning

  Md Abdullah Mamun, Gwen Lawrie, Tony Wright

  It remains a challenge in online settings to engage students as independent learners without teacher presence. This has led to increasing attention investigating the factors influencing student engagement in this context. As part of a PhD study, this paper investigates students' behavioural engagement with online learning modules without teacher supervision or peer support. The study examines three key constructs of behavioural engagement: student engagement with the task, effort level the student applies to taskcompletion and finally, following instructions. First, the findings suggest that student engagement was high in 'video' and 'feedback' sections as compared to 'simulation' activities. Second, students invested high effort in task-completion when the learning modules were delivered with instructional guidance. Finally, non-visual learners exhibit more difficulty following instructions in unsupported online settings. The results of this study will contribute to the burgeoning research field promoting the development of online modules that encourage participation of diverse learners.

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• PST Online: Learner voices guiding learning design

  Yvonne Masters, Sue Gregory, Stephen Grono

  Online teaching has become more pervasive throughout the 21st century, partly a result of new technologies allowing for interactive online learning environments and partly to meet the needs of students who cannot access traditional face-to-face classrooms for all or part of their schooling. Pre-service teacher education has lagged behind this uptake in online teaching, failing to prepare new graduate teachers for the possibility of teaching wholly online to students in a range of learning environments. Pre-Service Teachers Online is a website designed to address this gap by providing pre-service teachers with resources to assist in building online teaching skills. Current pre-service teachers' awareness of online teaching skills were sought, providing the foundation for the website. Presented is how the website was designed to meet identified pre-service teachers' needs allowing participants to reflectively consider how their current perceptions of teaching practices could apply in a blended or fully online classroom model.

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• From practitioner-producers to knowledge co-creators: An early view of a design-based research project to foster insight generation into MOOCs

  Katy McDevitt, Mario Ricci

  The University of Adelaide established its MOOC initiative, AdelaideX, in 2014 with goals including generating and sharing insights into effective practice in open online learning. Our professional and teaching staff are amassing valuable experience in conceptualising, designing, developing, delivering and evaluating MOOCs and are part of an emerging knowledge community among MOOC-active universities. In 2016, AdelaideX is running a Creating Insights Project, with the goals of feeding innovation at the University, enabling our people to fulfil aspirations towards capturing and sharing their ideas about MOOC making, and securing rich insights which can be fed formatively into future course and program activities. To do so, we have begun to experiment with a design-based model for practice research. In this way, we are positioning the relationship between academics and professionals as investigative partners, a promising means to develop capacity for insight generation in the open learning space.

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• Natural Language Proficiency and Computational Thinking: Two linked literacies of the 21st Century

  Ronald Monson

  Literacy as natural language fluency, is the primary literacy underpinning most learning but there is a new literacy gathering momentum in this information age - Computational Thinking. This paper draws connections between the two; highlighting analogs, differences, and bridges that are transforming both pedagogies while also illustrating a growing educational nexus.

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• Assessing the impact of an "Echo360-Active Learning Platform"-enabled classroom in a large enrolment blended learning undergraduate course in Genetics

  Colin Montpetit, Sonya Sabourin

  In response to calls from the higher education science community to increase student engagement in learning, scientific teaching (reflecting the true nature of science by capturing the process of discovery in the classroom) and reflective teaching (or scholarly teaching), a genetics course was redesigned as a blended learning course. The new course model has provided several opportunities to engage students in the 5E learning cycle and to redefine the classroom experience. Despite the growing literature on effective design of blended courses, very little research has been conducted and very little is known about the impact of components of blended courses for large enrolment courses in relation to student learning outcomes. The goal of this investigation was to assess the impact of an Echo360-ALP enabled classroom on learning gains in a large enrolment blended learning course.

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• Using Gamification and Mixed Reality Visualization to Improve Conceptual Understanding in ICT System Analysis and Design

  Juan Muñoz, Michael Cowling, James Birt

  This paper presents a research design and intervention that investigates how the use of mixed reality visualization and gamification can be applied to an ICT systems analysis and design course. The research focuses on a learning approach of an ICT modelling and design framework based on visual augmentation of traditional course content and class delivery. Assessment of the learning impact in regards to learners, system components and their interaction in system scenarios will be performed. Allowing learners to explore and discover information in the form of a gamified scavenger hunt that supports scaffolding learning chunks, aims to assist them towards a conceptual understanding of the solution. Educators can incorporate selected representations of key learning artefacts and resources in an augmented capacity using a variety of media such as 2d images, videos, graphics, simulations, and 3d models applied into the design process and promote active learning in the classroom.

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• Show me the Feedback: A Multi-Institutional Project Exploring Technology-Enabled Feedback Approaches for First Year

  Lisa O'Regan, Morag Munro, Mark Brown, Moira Maguire, Nuala Harding

  The Y1Feedback project is a partnership between four Irish Higher Education institutions, which aims to enhance feedback dialogue in first year undergraduate programmes through the use of digital technologies, to better support student transition. The project has conducted a review of feedback practice across partner institutions and a synthesis of feedback literature. Informed by this work, the project has identified a set of features of effective feedback for first year together with a set of technology-enabled feedback approaches. Currently, there are 20 case studies in progress to pilot these approaches. This paper reports the findings from the review of feedback practices and outlines features of effective feedback and approaches that educators can implement to better support first year transition.

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• Using student voice in the design of game based learning

  Mark O'Rourke

  Game technologies can provide exciting ways to engage and educate students and provide an active learning experience with a goal-directed agency. This research investigates how student voice is integral to the development and trialing of educational computer games in order to effectively target, and add meaning and relevance to learning outcomes. Games can offer a transformational change in pedagogical approaches by being intrinsically motivating, providing immediate feedback and scaffolding skill and knowledge acquisition. The research focused on understanding learner needs by involving students in project based development and examines the rationale behind making a pedagogical shift from unidirectional content delivery to collaboratively designing experience. The study adopted a Design Based Research methodology, within an Activity Theoretical framework.

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