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

 

 

 

The proceedings of the 2014 ASCILITE Conference

Rhetoric and Reality: Critical perspectives on educational technology

B. Hegarty, J. McDonald, & S.-K. Loke (Eds.), Rhetoric and Reality: Critical perspectives on educational technology. Proceedings ASCILITE 2014 Dunedin, New Zealand

St. David Lecture Complex, Dunedin, New Zealand

November 23 - 26, 2014

ASCILITE2014 Conference Website https://ascilite.org/conferences/dunedin2014/

Published: 20 November 2014

ASCILITE Conference - Concise Papers

  • Mid-semester student satisfaction feedback: Reducing confusion and anxiety

    Lorraine Parkin, Michael Henderson

    This small-scale pilot research sought to examine how gathering mid-semester student satisfaction feedback could impact (a) student and lecturer satisfaction with using online learning and (b) lecturer approaches to teaching in online environments. Much of the literature on collecting student feedback focuses on end of semester feedback and its benefit for improving future iterations of the course. In contrast, this case study of four units (subjects) in an Australian university investigated the potential of gathering mid-semester feedback to inform lecturers of student satisfaction and thereby open up opportunities for ongoing changes to the unit. The findings revealed that lecturers can use the collection of feedback early in the semester to allay confusion felt by students at the beginning of units. Mid-semester feedback was also found to be valued by lecturers for providing insights into students' perception of a unit's progress, allowing them to modify instructions when needed.

    Read article: Mid-semester student satisfaction feedback: Reducing confusion and anxiety

  • Designing a technology-enhanced authentic learning environment for a large engineering class

    Alberto Corrias, Martin L. Buist, Swee Kit Alan Soong

    A growing body of evidence suggests that one area in which new approaches have been a significant improvement over traditional teaching methods in tertiary education is where there has previously been a detachment between what is taught in the classroom and the real life scenarios where that content is used. For this reason, the creation of authentic learning environments in tertiary education has been advocated over the last decade. The literature now provides the necessary theoretical framework and boundaries of what can be defined as an authentic learning environment. Here, we present the design of several teaching practices aimed at creating an authentic learning environment in a large undergraduate engineering class. In particular, we leverage on various technological tools to overcome the inherent difficulties of providing an authentic learning environment in the presence of a large group of students.

    Read article: Designing a technology-enhanced authentic learning environment for a large engineering class

  • Designing virtual worlds for effective peer feedback: The case of Otago Virtual Hospital

    Phil Blyth, Swee-Kin Loke

    Despite the importance and reliability of peer feedback, medical students currently have few formal opportunities to give and receive peer feedback on their clinical practice. To provide medical students with such opportunities, a multi-user virtual hospital was developed. In the Otago Virtual Hospital, medical students role-play as junior doctors and manage realistic clinical cases within the Emergency Department. To encourage effective peer feedback, the instructional design of the virtual world needs to follow sound pedagogical principles. In this paper, we describe five of these principles and how the Otago Virtual Hospital has been redesigned to fulfill them. These redesign practices can serve to guide educators and instructional designers interested in implementing scalable and effective peer feedback on student performance.

    Read article: Designing virtual worlds for effective peer feedback: The case of Otago Virtual Hospital

  • Tools of the trade: ‘Breaking the ice’ with virtual tools in online learning

    Naomi McGrath, Sue Gregory, Helen Farley, Pauline Roberts

    The reality is that online learning can be a daunting and lonely experience. This is why icebreakers can be a rewarding practice for both students and educators. The use of icebreakers allows students studying online to introduce themselves and become familiar with other members of the group and/or community. Not only are these icebreakers used as a starter within the first weeks of study, but they are also used to help motivate students throughout the course. Highlighted in this paper are particular online (virtual) tools that can be used as icebreakers within an online learning environment and help shift the view of isolation associated with learning online and create a more engaged community of practice with effective learning.

    Read article: Tools of the trade: ‘Breaking the ice’ with virtual tools in online learning

  • Virtual classroom technology: Facilitating distance education nurses’ knowledge of systematic literature searching

    Elizabeth Pascoe, Sharon Karasmanis

    Online learning environments are increasingly viewed as a valid and beneficial means of facilitating learning in the higher education setting. Blackboard Collaborate is an online collaborative learning (OCL) technology that can be used as a virtual classroom in the distance education setting to facilitate knowledge of systematic literature searching. The technology allows for learning pedagogical principles that encourage collaborative engagement. The authors discuss how they developed and delivered instruction on systematic database searching for health literature to distance education nursing Masters’ students. An online self-reporting survey was administered to determine student knowledge, and to gauge student experience of using this technology.

    Read article: Virtual classroom technology: Facilitating distance education nurses’ knowledge of systematic literature searching

  • Open online courses and massively untold stories

    Leigh Blackall

    This paper seeks to account for a small range of open online courses that helped to inform the early development of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). It laments the loss of meaning in the word open and its historic alignment to free and open source principles. It calls for more academic work to better represent the histories and range of critical perspectives on open online courses, and outlines how Wikipedia can be used as a central organising platform for such work.

    Read article: Open online courses and massively untold stories

  • Refreshing the eLearning guidelines: Realigning rhetoric and reality

    Oriel Kelly

    First launched in 2005, the New Zealand eLearning Guidelines (NZeLgs) provided a set of questions to drive improvement in the tertiary sector’s capability to deliver eLearning. This paper describes a joint AKO Aotearoa/New Zealand Tertiary College (NZTC) funded project which has updated and enhanced the guidelines (eLg) for the tertiary sector during 2013 /2014 and which now provides access via a new website: (www.elg.ac.nz). The guidelines provide prompts for good practice as a guide to designing, implementing and enhancing eLearning for an expanded range of participants in the process – the learner, the teacher, the manager, the organisational leader and quality assurance bodies. The process of how the refreshed guidelines came to be will be shared, along with the principles underpinning the prompts for each of the different perspectives which have been designed to foster quality provision of eLearning for the sector.

    Read article: Refreshing the eLearning guidelines: Realigning rhetoric and reality

  • Choosing and using Google Sites for ePortfolios at EIT

    Scott Casley, Stephanie Day

    This report explains how and why Google Sites was chosen as an eportfolio management tool and provides a brief summary of a number of case studies where this approach was piloted at Eastern Institute of Technology (EIT) during 2013-14. The case studies were compiled after surveying the learners and teachers involved in selected pilot courses. The report attempts to identify factors that lead to the successful deployment and integration of Google Sites for eportfolios as an assessment tool in tertiary learning and teaching. The report concludes that Google Sites is recommended for use by students and staff for managing eportfolios as it is an easy to use, free and secure service enabling reflective practice, collaboration and lifelong learning.

    Read article: Choosing and using Google Sites for ePortfolios at EIT

  • Learning to fish for a lifetime: Personalised mobile academic phrase libraries – project proposal

    Kay Hammond

    This paper is the proposal for the initial phase of a research project that aims to explore student engagement and feedback on a personalised, digital academic phrase library resource – MAPLE (My Academic Phrase Library on Evernote). This resource offers learners a digital, assignment focused, template where they can record generic academic phrases from their discipline specific readings to build a personalised, discipline specific, academic phrase library. This project aims to advance the use of academic phrase libraries from pre-selected examples to individual student / teacher co-constructed resources. This resource situates the learner and the learning within the discipline specific academic reading and writing contexts required to develop academic reading and writing skills. The context is a diverse cohort of first year health students from 14 disciplines enrolled in a compulsory academic skills paper. Some preliminary findings will be presented.

    Read article: Learning to fish for a lifetime: Personalised mobile academic phrase libraries – project proposal

  • Using visual analytics to explore Community Engaged Learning and Teaching at the University of Otago

    Gala Hesson, A.C.M. Moskal, Kerry Shephard

    Community Engaged Learning and Teaching (CELT) is an interdisciplinary practice involving students and the wider community. Through CELT, students acquire skills that may not be so readily learned in formal classwork. Practitioners at this university came together to promote CELT to the wider institution, but faced difficulty in clearly defining the boundaries of the practice. To aid the development of a shared understanding of CELT, practitioners engaged in a process of ‘visual analytics’. This method involved analysing data on CELT programmes through the collaborative development of interactive visualisations. In the end, the visual analytics approach proved useful for co-constructing a shared understanding of the CELT space.

    Read article: Using visual analytics to explore Community Engaged Learning and Teaching at the University of Otago

  • A Badge of Honour: Recognising sustainable teaching principles with open badges

    William Liu, Mark Northover

    AUT University is developing a certification checklist and support materials to encourage and acknowledge ‘green teaching’. Green teaching includes using less resources (e.g., paper, energy, transport, etc.), making more use of online tools and activities, and including conservation and sustainability concepts in course content. Lecturers can earn a green teaching label for their course, which is displayed in the University’s Learning Management System. This is designed to support a global sustainability imperative, and to align with a key strand in the University’s strategic themes. As a part of this project we have also developed an understanding of ‘open badges’, allowing our users to earn a verified award that can be displayed in a variety of other online systems.

    Read article: A Badge of Honour: Recognising sustainable teaching principles with open badges

  • Do we need a discussion forum?

    Jennie Swann, Rhian Salmon

    This paper is a response to an issue that arose during a 2013 ascilite Community Mentoring Project (CMP) in which the (social scientist) mentor and the (physical scientist) mentee discovered that they had very different assumptions about the ways in which people learn online. This paper begins a process of unpacking the complex relationships between discussion forum behaviour and the ways in which lecturers and students think about higher education and their disciplines. A multiple case study approach is described in which discussion forum data is compared with themes emerging from survey and interview data in two different disciplines in two universities. It is suggested that the roots of these differences may lie not so much in the nature of the disciplines themselves but more in the ways in which people think in these disciplines. These findings will be of use in course and curriculum design.

    Read article: Do we need a discussion forum?

  • Mixed media visualization effect on student perceptions and learning outcomes

    James Birt

    This paper presents a methodology and pilot study rationale to examine the effect of mixed media visualization on learning outcomes in three dimensional (3D) modeling. The context for this study is a university first year undergraduate interactive media and design course. Meta analytic studies in the use of visualizations show positive improvements in learning outcomes among low and high spatial learners. But often these studies are focused on single media and virtual representations. Many multimedia learning studies do not take into consideration important factors that could influence the appropriate selection of media. This exploratory study aims to address this through the evaluation of physical and virtual media using 3D printed, virtual reality and two dimensional (2D) projections. A design science research methodology is proposed outlining several core guidelines evaluating the technology media method through learner blogs. The aim is improved learner engagement and outcomes through more meaningful learning activities.

    Read article: Mixed media visualization effect on student perceptions and learning outcomes

Showing 53–65 of 114 articles