2014: ASCILITE 2014 Conference Proceedings. Rhetoric and Reality: Critical perspectives on educational technology

ASCILITE Conference - Full Papers

• How do virtual world experiences bring about learning? : A critical review of theories

  Swee-Kin Loke

  While students do learn real-world knowledge and skills in virtual worlds, educators have yet to adequately theorise how students’ virtual world experiences bring about this learning. This paper critically reviewed theories currently used to underpin empirical work in virtual worlds for education. In particular, it evaluated how applicable these theories’ learning mechanisms are to virtual world-based learning. Eleven theories were identified from 80 journal papers. Four learning mechanisms were found to be applicable to virtual worlds: that students learn through reflection, verbal interactions, mental operations, and vicarious experiences. However, one commonly-implied learning mechanism was found to be inapplicable to virtual worlds: that students undergo a physical sensorimotor experience of the real-world phenomenon through their virtual world actions. An alternative theory is needed to explain how students’ virtual world actions might bring about learning, so as to help educators determine what exactly students can learn by performing virtual world actions.

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• Outcomes from a Digital Literacy Project: The EIT experience

  Stephanie Day, Lynda Corner

  The Digital Literacy Project was launched in response to recognising that the use of technologies to enable dual campus collaborative teaching and learning required an improvement in the digital skills of staff. The project used a process of self-assessment and competency based training to address identified needs in workplace, educational and communication technology skills. On completion of the project, staff were surveyed and asked about their experiences of the self assessment and training processes. Staff indicated that while the needs self-assessment process was cumbersome, time-consuming and sometimes confusing, the training received was beneficial, but needed to be timely, personally relevant and easily accessible. As a result of this research, it is recommended that the self-assessment process be consolidated and that the Institute consider mechanisms to measure the overall effectiveness of ongoing training initiatives with respect to training delivery, embedding of new skills and Institutional Return on Investment.

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• Towards a theoretical mobile heutagogy framework

  Vickel Narayan, Jan Herrington

  Heutagogy is a relatively new learning and teaching framework. Heutagogy advocates student centred learning and teaching strategies where the learning is directed and determined by the learner. At the time when heutagogy was conceptualised as a teaching framework (in 2000), the web was still in its infancy. More than a decade later, the web has evolved from being transmission focused (Web 1.0) to participatory in nature (Web 2.0). At the same time, mobile technologies such as smartphones and tablets have amplified the capabilities and ways Web 2.0 tools and technologies can be used. In this paper, we look at how mobile devices and social media can support and offer unique opportunities for using heutagogy as a pedagogical framework. A set of design principles is proposed resulting from a review of literature on heutagogy, social media and mLearning. The design principles provide educators with a guide on how to utilise the unique affordances of Web 2.0 tools and mobile devices in implementing learner directed and determined learning or life long learning.

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• Coming of the third wave: A move toward best practice, user defined tools and mainstream integration for virtual worlds in education

  Marcus McDonald, Sue Gregory, Helen Farley, Jennifer Harlim, Jenny Sim, Christine Newman

  The Gartner Hype Cycle has placed virtual worlds on the climb up the Slope of Enlightenment. While some authors in the past have made much of the educational use of virtual worlds languishing in the Trough of Disillusionment, there has been a community of authors, designers and educators working to further understanding of the limitations and affordances of such technologies. It is time to pool this knowledge, experience, tools and practice to solidify best practice, focus research on development of specific elements and forge ahead to shape the third wave of educational virtual worlds. This paper attempts to outline this information and practice while offering solutions for further development.

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• Experimental study on consumer-technology supported authentic immersion in virtual environments for education and vocational training

  Torsten Reiners, Lincoln C. Wood, Sue Gregory

  Despite significant and rapid technology improvements, educators have frequently failed to make use of the new opportunities to create more authentic learning scenarios. Virtual worlds offer an attractive proposition to create 3D representations of real business environments to provide an authentic learning activity for higher education students to take part in. However, the controls and displays are still clunky and unnatural, reducing the opportunity for students to immerse themselves in the event and focus on experiential learning. To overcome this challenge we examine the role of using a headset display that allows the user to change perspective with a flick of the head, improving their ability to ‘feel’ part of the environment, and thus increase their immersion in the activities that they are engaged in through more realistic control and improved perspective in the virtual environment. A series of experiments are conducted comparing the technology to established technologies and the level of control exerted by the learner (e.g., they either ‘control’ or they ‘passively observe’ as someone else controls). These experiments provide evidence that consumer-technology can improve immersion and equip educators with an affordable instrument to present classes that learners ‘take more seriously’.

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• Efficient learning design : Concept, catalyst, and cases

  Mikkel Godsk

  This paper presents the current approach to implementing educational technology with learning design at the Faculty of Science and Technology, Aarhus University, by introducing the concept of ‘efficient learning design’. The underlying hypothesis is that implementing learning design is more than engaging educators in the design process and developing teaching and learning, it is a shift in educational practice that potentially requires a stakeholder analysis and ultimately a business model for the deployment. What is most important is to balance the institutional, educator, and student perspectives and to consider all these in conjunction in order to obtain a sustainable, efficient learning design. The approach to deploying learning design in terms of the concept of efficient learning design, the catalyst for educational development, i.e. the learning design model and how it is being used, and two cases of efficient learning design interventions are being presented.

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• Turning a digital vision into reality

  Stephen Marshall, Jonathan Flutey

  The potential of technology to reinvent higher education has recently resurged in popular consciousness with the articulation of the idea of the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). At Victoria we are avoiding radical technocratic transformation by engaging a process of collective sense-making and progressive capability building to better understand and take advantage of the affordances of technology. We outline our six-year strategy of organizational collaboration and change intended to help a research-focused university evolve and grow its capability, agility and aspirations for technology in learning and teaching, and discuss the progress to date.

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• A multidisciplinary focus on 21st century digital learning environments: New program at CSU

  Judy O'Connell

  As a result of an extensive curriculum review of a master’s programme for teachers in the School of Information Studies, a multi-disciplinary degree programme in education and information studies was developed to uniquely facilitate educators’ capacity to be responsive to the demands of a digitally connected world. Charles Sturt University’s new Master of Education (Knowledge Networks and Digital Innovation) aims to develop agile leaders in new cultures of digital formal and informal learning. By examining key features and influences of global connectedness, information organisation, communication and participatory cultures of learning, students are provided with the opportunity to reflect on their professional practice in a networked learning community, and to improve learning and teaching in digital environments. This paper presents a case study of the implementation of the new programme, reviews the first session experiences of the students, and presents findings from student evaluation of the levels of success achieved.

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• Herding cats and measuring elephants: Implementing and evaluating an institutional blended and mobile learning strategy

  Carol Russell

  The University of Western Sydney is more than half way through a three year strategic program to build its blended and mobile learning capacity. This paper presents a framework that has emerged from implementing and evaluating the blended learning strategy thus far; linking institution-led, academic-led, student-led and community-led components. It illustrates how all of these components form part of an integrated system, in which change needs to be managed as a whole. The experience to date has shown the need to notice and deal with the concerns of academic teaching staff, and to be clear about which measurements of progress are meaningful and relevant. The specific context of this university has determined how the various blended learning initiatives have been prioritized. Although other university contexts will differ, the overall framework could be applied in any institution to help align institutional initiatives to adopt blended and mobile learning, and to develop appropriate evaluation.

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• The role of the interpersonal in online knowledge construction: Unrealised or unrealisable potential?

  Jo Lander

  The potential for online discussions and the supportive communities of learners which develop within them to support the collaborative construction of knowledge is often described but not always realised in practice. The reasons for this are not well explained in the literature. To better understand the interplay between social and cognitive aspects of knowledge construction, online interaction three postgraduate online courses in health professional education was studied using a linguistically-based discourse analytical approach. Findings show attention to interpersonal relationships within this public and persistent medium is evident in areas such as asking questions, providing information, citing sources and argumentation and has the potential to disrupt knowledge construction. Other factors such as the ambiguous spoken-written nature of these discussions also play a role, raising the possibility that these tensions may be inherent.

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• Seeing between the lines: How do PhD students use computer technologies in their research practices?

  Kwong Nui Sim, Russell Butson, Sarah Stein, Jacques van der Meer

  The use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has grown enormously in the last decade with computers and smart devices becoming indispensable in tertiary students’ study practices. There is, however, limited documented research about the ways PhD students use ICT in their research practice. Nevertheless, it is expected that PhD students will make use of various computer technologies throughout their research process (e.g., preparation phase, fieldwork phase, analysis phase, and write-up phase). This paper reports on the analysis of one of the datasets in a study that examined how PhD students use ICT to support their research practice. The analysis takes into account the relationship and/or the tensions that exist between the PhD student participants and ICT. Two discussion sessions, which included photo capture, were conducted with nine doctoral students, who self-reported as being skilled computer users in a short questionnaire. The sessions aimed to review the ways the PhD students engage with and integrate computer technologies in light of the four phases in their research process. The preliminary analysis indicates some interesting hybrid relationships between papers and computer technologies (i.e., computer devices, tools and networks) in this cohort of PhD students’ daily research practices. These findings will form the basis of the other parts of analysis in the mentioned larger study to investigate relationships between the PhD students and ICT in their process of doing doctoral research.

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• Three paths for learning analytics and beyond: Moving from rhetoric to reality

  Colin Beer, Rolley Tickner, David Jones

  There is growing rhetoric about the potential of learning analytics in higher education. There is concern about what the growing hype around learning analytics will mean for the reality. Will learning analytics be a repeat of past mistakes where technology implementations fail to move beyond a transitory fad and provide meaningful and sustained contributions to learning and teaching? How can such a fate be avoided? This paper identifies three paths that learning analytics implementations might take, with particular consideration to their likely impact on learning and teaching. An ongoing learning analytics project – currently used by hundreds of teaching staff to support early interventions to improve student retention - at a regional Australian university is examined in relation to the three paths, and some implications, challenges and future directions are discussed.

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• Factors influencing tertiary students’ choice of study mode

  Matthew Bailey, Dirk Ifenthaler, Maree Gosper, Mandy Kretzschmar

  Managing and understanding student’s motivations and experiences of learning will be increasingly important as demand for higher education continues to grow and online delivery continues to evolve and expand into open access, on-campus and distance modes of study. It is in the interests of institutions offering two or more modes of study to understand the reasons why students make different choices. This research investigates the importance of six factors (personal, logistics, teaching and learning, learning support, environment, and advice and marketing) influencing 744 students choice of three different modes of study. Findings indicate that there are significant differences in the importance of factors amongst students enrolled in different study modes, although when averaged across all cohorts ‘teaching and learning’ and ‘logistics’ factors were the most influential. It is suggested that providing a high level of transparency in the information provided to students is vital for higher education institutions.

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