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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

  • Thinking through a deconstructionist philosophy of technology in education, part 1: ‘Originary technicity’ and the invention of the student body

    Stephen Abblitt

    This paper takes the ubiquity of personal mobile technologies today as a provocation to propose a fundamentally new understanding of the relations between knowledge, student bodies and educational technologies. It draws on recent deconstructionist philosophies of technology (principally Stiegler and Derrida) and the concept of “originary technicity” to theorise the relation between the human and the technical as not only mutually constitutive, but also ontologically undecidable. The case is especially so given the spatial and temporal connectivity and flexibility enabled by mobile technologies, the new economy of attention they facilitate, and the motile biological, technological, socio-material and semiotic intersections now endlessly working to produce the student body (individual and collective) in the digital university.

    Read article: Thinking through a deconstructionist philosophy of technology in education, part 1: ‘Originary technicity’ and the invention of the student body

  • Developing an online learning community in Industrial Law

    Lisa King, Bronwen Leroy

    In the past decade, theoretical frameworks for designing online learning communities have continued to evolve. These frameworks can provide an engaging and dynamic learning experience for online students. In the current Higher Education climate, current teaching approaches need to adapt to changing student demographics to retain student engagement. At the University of New England, a unit Industrial Law has been redeveloped as a scaffolded and activity focused online learning experience with off-campus students. The aim of this approach was to achieve a collaborative learning environment that encouraged critical thinking and communication. This paper reflects on the frameworks of online learning communities in practice, specifically relating to the instructional design process underpinning the development of online learning communities.

    Read article: Developing an online learning community in Industrial Law

  • Adoption of mobile devices by academic staff: The reality

    Kathryn Mac Callum, Michael Verhaart

    Before mobile technology can be introduced into a teaching and learning situation, it would be expected that the confidence and ability of the teachers’ to understand and use the technology would be a significant factor for successful integration. The research presented in this paper is part of a multi-institute research project to implement a framework using mobile devices for enhanced learning and institutional change across different disciplines and institutions. The paper focuses on a survey to benchmark the use of mobile technology by academic staff in one of the tertiary institutes involved in the wider study. Findings identify that not all staff have equal access to these types of devices nor use these devices extensively to support their work. The reasons for this are wide but include cost, perceived ability and technical factors.

    Read article: Adoption of mobile devices by academic staff: The reality

  • Auditing the Office for Learning and Teaching Resource Library

    Philip Hider, Barney Dalgarno, Sue Bennett, Ying-Hsang Liu, Carole Gerts, Carla Daws, Barbara Spiller, Robert Parkes, Pat Knight, Raylee Macaulay, Lauren Carlson

    The Australian government Office for Learning and Teaching’s (OLT) Resource Library (http://www.olt.gov.au/resources) is a key means of disseminating the outcomes from projects funded by itself and its predecessor organisations, the Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC) and the Carrick Institute. In order to apply the recommendations and resources emanating from these projects, it is vital that educators and other stakeholders are aware of, and effectively able to use, the Resource Library. Based on anecdotal evidence indicating a lack of awareness of the Resource Library and problems with consistently being able to search for and retrieve relevant resources from the database, the OLT commissioned a project to formally evaluate the Library and redesign it to improve access and usability. This paper reports on the project’s progress, including the results from a questionnaire completed by 117 higher education stakeholders.

    Read article: Auditing the Office for Learning and Teaching Resource Library

  • Benchmarking for technology enhanced learning: Taking the next step in the journey

    Michael Sankey

    Benchmarking in the areas of technology enhanced learning (TEL) has become an important part of how many institutions are able to mediate a level of quality in their learning and teaching practice. Many tools and methodologies have emerged over the last 10+ years to help our institutions undertake this important task. A recent major benchmarking activity (June 2014) took this to a whole new level; with 24 institutions meeting together to benchmark their capacity in TEL. This was based around using the newly refreshed ACODE Benchmarks and involved each institution performing a self-assessment of their practices and then sharing this with the other participants. This paper will report on this activity and, importantly, provide evidence of the value of this activity for those involved. It will conclude with a series of recommendations on how this may be applied by other institutions, as they contend with the rapidly changing TEL space.

    Read article: Benchmarking for technology enhanced learning: Taking the next step in the journey

  • Polysynchronous learning: A model for student interaction and engagement

    Barney Dalgarno

    The advent of MOOCs has drawn renewed interest in online pedagogies and new impetus for efforts to understand the ways in which face to face, online and blended modalities afford distinct patterns of student interaction and engagement. At the same time, the ubiquitous availability of mobile devices is presenting new opportunities for face to face students to engage in new ways with teachers, peers and content during and after class through multiple ever-present communication streams. In order to cater for students undertaking their studies in these new technology mediated environments, more needs to be known about the way in which student interaction and engagement changes in such environments. This paper discusses a new theoretical stance on the interaction patterns of students in face to face and online settings. The term polysynchronous learning is proposed to encompass the new learning opportunities afforded by contemporary online learning technologies.

    Read article: Polysynchronous learning: A model for student interaction and engagement

  • Finding and sharing educational resources using Twitter, Hashtags and Storify

    Mark McGuire

    This paper reports on the use of Twitter, hashtags and Storify to connect with individuals inside and outside the university who have a shared interest in the future of libraries. The objective was to discover and share educational resources that were applicable to a class project, by engaging with experts through social media, rather than by searching for the resources directly. A related aim was to discover how even limited social contact with others could result in a more collaborative, networked approach to problem solving, in keeping with contemporary design practice. Over the 13-week course, 250 Twitter messages were collected, narrated and archived by the course Lecturer (and author), using Storify. During class discussions, students reported that the resources were useful, and they commented on the effectiveness of reaching out beyond the classroom in this way. This trial also provided insights into how such collaborations could be taken further.

    Read article: Finding and sharing educational resources using Twitter, Hashtags and Storify

  • Defining an agenda for learning analytics

    Cathy Gunn

    Learning analytics is an emergent field of research in educational technology where the use of large, passive datasets collected routinely by online learning systems can offer unprecedented insights into student learning and behaviour. These datasets provide objective feedback from students to teachers, allowing the latter to check the validity of assumptions and the influence of learning design decisions. This offers a new opportunity to inform learning design and enhance broad understanding of learning with technology. However, translating raw analytics data into meaningful information for teachers and learning designers currently requires a high level of technical expertise. This paper outlines learning analytics as an emergent field of research, and an agenda to advance understanding and promote development of appropriate methodologies for research in learning technology.

    Read article: Defining an agenda for learning analytics

  • Socio-economic status and students’ experiences of technologies: Is there a digital divide?

    Jo McKenzie, Jenny Pizzica, Maree Gosper, Janne Malfroy, Kevin Ashford-Rowe

    With the widening participation agenda in Australia, more students from low socio-economic backgrounds are being encouraged to undertake university degrees, and will be expected to use digital technologies and demonstrate digital literacies. This paper used data from a 2013 survey of students across three universities, to examine whether there were socio-economic differences in students’ access to and use of technologies. There were few differences in access to equipment. There were also no differences in the most common uses of technologies, such as accessing course materials from the LMS, and few differences between students from low, medium and high socioeconomic status suburbs. However students who received government support benefits less frequently used technologies that related to disciplinary skills or to creating rather than receiving content. There may be a subtle digital divide, where financially disadvantaged students are engaging less with technologies that will most benefit their future employment.

    Read article: Socio-economic status and students’ experiences of technologies: Is there a digital divide?

  • The socially networked language learner: Implications for tertiary language education

    Antonie Alm

    This paper investigates tertiary language students’ experiences of the social networking site Facebook for out-of-class language exposure. It draws on the findings of a larger study on the use of Facebook for informal language learning, and focuses on 1) the connections between language students and their native speaker Facebook friends, 2) students’ digital writing practices and 3) students’ perceptions of the value of informal learning on Facebook as opposed to classroom based formal study. The findings of the study indicate a disconnect between informal and formal learning practices and suggestions will be provided to bridge this gap.

    Read article: The socially networked language learner: Implications for tertiary language education

  • The one-eyed king: Positioning Universal Design within learning and teaching at a tertiary institution

    Thomas Kerr, Iain McAlpine, Michael Grant

    This paper describes the implementation of universal design (UD) principles in a tertiary setting from an educational design perspective. It discusses how those responsible for implementing this relatively new approach to learning design are building a dialogue around UD in education and willing cooperation from staff in the development of its use in course design at the institutional level. The nine principles of UD are described, together with the three principal models that apply UD to learning. An implementation plan, currently in development at a metropolitan university, maps out how the educational development team is building acceptance of UD principles across the campus in the design of all future learning materials.

    Read article: The one-eyed king: Positioning Universal Design within learning and teaching at a tertiary institution

  • Exploring the use of micro-credentialing and digital badges in learning environments to encourage motivation to learn and achieve

    Richard Elliott, John Clayton, Jun Iwata

    For the last 20 years the benefits of networked communities, interactive media, online tutorials, and e-learning applications have been investigated for the provision of education in New Zealand. In monitoring individual performance, a range of measures can be used, such as allocated grades, credits earned, and activities completed. These specific measures are institutionally controlled, have limited reach beyond the institution and, in isolation, do not truly represent a learner’s progress, proficiency or acknowledge a learner’s achievements. This paper argues that digital micro-credentials, often called badges, can be used as valid indicators of accomplishment, skill, knowledge or interest. In formal educational environments endorsed credentials, with defined learning outcomes, can be used for certification purposes. This paper will contend that microcredentialing ecosystems create a broader picture of a learner’s educational achievement by providing the infrastructure for individual learners to demonstrate their knowledge, skills and achievements through the display of endorsed digital micro-credential collections.

    Read article: Exploring the use of micro-credentialing and digital badges in learning environments to encourage motivation to learn and achieve

  • The transition from traditional face-to-face teaching to blended learning: Implications and challenges from a mathematics discipline perspective

    Birgit Loch, Rosy Borland

    Despite the drive at Australian universities towards blended learning, the research on the effectiveness and successful implementation of this model is lagging behind in some disciplines. In this paper we highlight the need for targeted research into blended learning in mathematics at more than an individual unit scale, particularly in the context of the flipped classroom. The literature on the flipped classroom in mathematics is limited to reports from enthusiastic individuals who have flipped their units with more or less success, with no reports on the sustainability of these implementations. We take the perspective of a discipline that already faces certain challenges with respect to student preparedness and special needs to facilitate online learning. From the literature, we extract research questions that need to be addressed urgently, and that may in the future be used to form a discipline-specific framework for introducing blended learning.

    Read article: The transition from traditional face-to-face teaching to blended learning: Implications and challenges from a mathematics discipline perspective

Showing 92–104 of 114 articles