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2013: ASCILITE 2013 Conference Proceedings. Electric Dreams

 

 

 

The proceedings of the 2013 ASCILITE Conference

Electric Dreams

H, Carter, M. Gosper, & J. Hedberg (Eds.) Electric Dreams. Proceedings ASCILITE 2013 Sydney.

Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

December 1-4, 2013. 

ASCILITE2013 Conference Website https://ascilite.org/conferences/sydney13/

Published: 30 November 2013

ASCILITE Conference - Concise Papers

  • Communicating with peers online: What do students expect of each other?

    Dianne Forbes

    This study looks at how students experience asynchronous online discussion (AOD) within initial teacher education. In particular, the study investigates what students expect of their peers when communicating online for the purpose of learning. Ascertained via an online focus group and interviews with students, findings indicate student preferences for academic netiquette. Student expectations can inform pedagogy for AOD if used as a basis for negotiation of guidelines for online communication.

    Read article: Communicating with peers online: What do students expect of each other?

  • Use of Anatomage tables in a large first year core unit

    Georgina Fyfe, Sue Fyfe, Danielle Dye, Hannah Crabb

    Anatomage tables were incorporated into a large core unit in health sciences at Curtin University to replace cadaver material. Students worked in groups of eight around the table, as one of several stations in weekly workshops facilitated by tutors. Tutors and students completed a survey asking about their use of technology and their experiences with the Anatomage tables. Tutors also contributed to focus groups (n=16), and student interaction around the table was recorded on camera. Student survey response was 18% (n= 326) and for tutors, 69% (n=22). Preliminary analysis suggests that most students found the Anatomage tables good for ideas of scale and relationships of organ structures, and liked being able to rotate the images, but were less impressed with graphics quality and the limitations to group interaction. Tutors felt well-prepared for using the tables but were frustrated by technical issues, and few thought the tables were a good investment.

    Read article: Use of Anatomage tables in a large first year core unit

  • Second Life calling: Language learners communicating virtually across the world

    Belma Gaukrodger, Clare Atkins

    Language learners are motivated to learn when they understand a given context and are able to relate to the authenticity of the situation. Many of these activities are traditionally achieved through role-playing. In Second Life (SL), people from different corners of the globe can participate in live, synchronous communication in a shared virtual space through their virtual representations or 'avatars'. One advantage of SL for such role-play is that the focus is on the avatar, not directly on the language learner. This paper reports the results from a pilot study conducted at a New Zealand polytechnic on the perceptions of learners of English using the multi- user virtual environment of Second Life to complement their learning.

    Read article: Second Life calling: Language learners communicating virtually across the world

  • Machinima for immersive and authentic learning in higher education

    Brent Gregory, Sue Gregory, Myee Gregory

    The use of virtual worlds have been well documented as a space for immersive participation by students when learning authentic tasks that can be difficult, if not impossible, to undertake in the real world. They have also been used in order to grasp important concepts through machinima (inworld video). A pilot project, "computers@armidale", explores the use of machinima to explain important concepts in a first year accountancy degree. Often, these concepts are difficult to grasp without taking students through authentic learning tasks. This paper describes the learning concept, the creation of the machinima and how it is used with first year accountancy students through a think out loud protocol.

    Read article: Machinima for immersive and authentic learning in higher education

  • Transmedia in English Literature Classes: A Literature Review and Project Proposal

    Michael Griffith, Matt Bower

    This paper is the beginning of a research project which will explore the function and impact of Transmedia (TM) in Higher Education (specifically English Literature studies). There are several underlying assumptions that are being tested about the range of benefits to students of using this technology. These include: that TM deepens student understanding of the nature of creative expression (including literature); that TM deepens student engagement with the traditional literature they have been studying; that TM releases students' creative expression; that TM provides students with insights into the extraordinary creative power of digital technologies; that TM deepens students' sense of community (both within and beyond class).

    Read article: Transmedia in English Literature Classes: A Literature Review and Project Proposal

  • Reviewing the past to imagine the future of elearning

    Cathy Gunn

    The conference theme 'learning from the past' invites reflection on educational technology research and development in 30 years since Ascilite began; a period of rapid technology adoption and educational change. Common tools have morphed from static, costly devices requiring qualified programmers to low cost mobile ones that virtually every student in the western world uses daily. The social media 'revolution' is democratizing knowledge creation and sharing. People connect for education, professional and social reasons in ways that were inconceivable in the 1980s. This paper summarizes milestones, and asks how well universities use past experience to understand the present and plan for the future. The wisdom of hindsight is unquestionable, while capacity to predict the future is less certain. Some game changing technologies have come out of left field to knock expectations off the radar. The paper concludes by asking if past experience can really help us prepare for a largely unpredictable future.

    Read article: Reviewing the past to imagine the future of elearning

  • Applying Web-conferencing in a Beginners' Chinese Class

    Sijia Guo

    The development of new technologies and the falling cost of high-speed Internet access have made it easier for institutes and language teachers to opt for different ways to communicate with students at a distance. The emergence of videoconferencing applications, which integrate text, chat, audio/ video and graphic facilities, offers great opportunities for language learning to through the multimodal environment. This paper reports on initial data elicited from a pilot study of using web-conferencing in the teaching of a first year Chinese class in order to promote learners' collaborative learning. Firstly, a comparison of three conferencing tools was conducted to determine the pedagogical value of the web-conferencing tool-Blackboard Collaborate. Secondly, the evaluation of 10 campus-based Chinese learners who conducted three one-hour online sessions via the multimodal environment reveals the users' choice of modes and their learning preference.

    Read article: Applying Web-conferencing in a Beginners' Chinese Class

  • Academics adopting mobile devices: The zone of free movement

    Boris Handal, Jean MacNish, Peter Petocz

    This exploratory research characterised the degree of adoption of mobile learning (ML) devices among academic staff at an Australian university. It also sought to evaluate the impact of academics' perceptions about possibilities and constraints in the adoption of these technologies. A zone of free movement (ZFM) scale was developed and validated to quantify the magnitude and direction of those perceptions. Results showed that academic staff are characteristically at the third of the Russell's (1995) six developmental stages of technological adoption. Lack of time to integrate ML into courses, limited availability of mobile devices, little familiarity with the tools, as well as the perception that students cannot use them as a word- processor, act as inhibitors to the adoption of the technology. In turn, the perception that mobile tools enhance student-lecturer communication outside class was found to be a positive predictor of adoption.

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  • Building bridges for non-engineers: Virtual world support for project based delivery

    Merle Hearns

    For the past decade, educators have participated in virtual world teaching. Manukau Institute of Technology entered the virtual world of Second Life in 2009. Since then foundation or bridging students have repeatedly demonstrated skill development and knowledge acquisition through the utilization of virtual world resources. A change in the way the foundation curriculum is delivered has taken place over the last two and a half years with a switch to project-based delivery. A Virtual World Club was started to support students in their project work. Over the past year, the club has attracted attention from students and lecturers that has led to a more widespread adoption of the use of virtual worlds. Plans are underway to bring MIT students into alternative worlds, and recent technical advances will be an integral part of the direction MIT will take in future years.

    Read article: Building bridges for non-engineers: Virtual world support for project based delivery

  • "The slides are part of the cake": PowerPoint, software literacy and tertiary education

    Craig Hight, Elaine Khoo, Bronwen Cowie, Rob Torrens

    This paper reports on the findings from a two-year funded research project exploring software literacy - how it is understood, developed and applied in tertiary teaching-learning contexts and how this understanding serves new learning. MS PowerPoint was selected as an initial focus as it is widely available and commonly used. Two disciplines (Media Studies and Engineering) were case studied and data collection obtained through student interviews and an online survey. Findings revealed that students tend to draw from informal learning strategies when learning to use PowerPoint, they have the functional skills and understanding of the software, and were able to identify some of its key affordances and constraints. However, they were only able to critique these at a superficial level, suggesting a need for formal recognition of software literacy as a means to empower students to engage with software and its use at a more critical level.

    Read article: "The slides are part of the cake": PowerPoint, software literacy and tertiary education

  • Connecting and Reflecting with Ning

    Janette Hughes

    This paper chronicles one instructor's experiences using a social networking site (Ning) to teach two graduate courses in education. It explores the decisions made in setting up the Ning and the affordances of teaching using a blended model of synchronous and asynchronous learning in UOIT's online graduate program. The focus is specifically on the benefits and challenges of using a Ning network and Ning's pedagogical potential for collaborative knowledge construction, the creation of a community of practice, which fosters social presence and multimodal communication.

    Read article: Connecting and Reflecting with Ning

  • Designing contemporary music courses for the 21st century musician: Virtual worlds as a live music performance space

    Lisa Jacka, Matthew Hill

    The landscape has already changed for the music industry in the way that music is created, performed and distributed. Higher education courses in music, including contemporary music, are abundant but in many cases are not preparing students for the 21st century music industry. Innovative technology is pushing the boundaries of what live performance in music actually entails. Technology such as virtual worlds is opening up avenues for greater control by the musician in relation to design of performance spaces and ability to attract global audiences. The potential for the exploration of virtual worlds by musicians to promote appropriate career development skills is discussed. Technical, organisational and motivational issues are also raised. Problems and possibilities associated with the initial running of performances in a virtual world reveal the capacity of higher education to implement live music performance in virtual worlds as part of their music courses.

    Read article: Designing contemporary music courses for the 21st century musician: Virtual worlds as a live music performance space

  • 'It's not the university experience we were expecting': Digitally literate undergraduate students reflect on changing pedagogy

    Amanda Jefferies

    This paper reports from a 2012 small-scale study with campus-based undergraduate students at an Australian research-focussed university. The students' ownership of learning technologies was examined alongside their appreciation and experience of online learning opportunities. It came to light that a number of the students having opted for a campus- based experience were less willing to embrace fully the wider blend in learning that the learning environment provided. These digitally competent and literate students held a somewhat stereotyped expectation of university teaching as being a didactic process within a classroom with some blend of online learning activities. The students typically owned a range of personal technologies and they were avid users of one particular social network - Facebook. This preference for a single social network above all others has been found to be true in both prior UK studies (Ofcom, 2012) and US experiences (Dahlstrom, 2012). The students generally considered themselves as consumers of technology to support their learning rather than as engaging with university LMS to transform their learning approach. Suggestions for improving the scaffolding of learning are made.

    Read article: 'It's not the university experience we were expecting': Digitally literate undergraduate students reflect on changing pedagogy

Showing 66–78 of 130 articles