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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

  • An online professional network to support teachers' information and communication technology development

    Damian Maher, Shukri Sanber, Leanne Cameron, Phil Keys, Roger Vallance

    This paper reports on an evaluation undertaken of the potential impact of a Network for Educators: the Pathways for Learning, Anywhere, Anytime (PLANE) website. The evaluation was undertaken in New South Wales, Australia with teachers in Government, Catholic and Independent schools in both rural and suburban areas. The benefits and challenges associated with supporting teachers' information and communication technologies (ICT) skills via a professional learning network platform are highlighted. Results of the study indicate that a well-designed online platform could potentially provide a space for teachers to learn to integrate ICT in their teaching with and from each other within a learning community.

    Read article: An online professional network to support teachers' information and communication technology development

  • MOOCs: What's cultural inclusion got to do with it?

    Mauricio Marrone, Lilia Mantai, Karina Luzia

    This paper outlines a preliminary scoping exercise that surveyed how good practice principles around cultural inclusion are currently incorporated into online learning, and more specifically, into Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs. Combining good practices principles for learning and teaching across cultures and elements of Universal Instructional Design, this small-scale survey of courses provided on four MOOC platforms - Coursera, Udacity, Open2Study and edX - looks at determining what can be considered good culturally inclusive practice. The aim of the project is to establish minimum standards and examples of good practice that can form the benchmarks for all online units.

    Read article: MOOCs: What's cultural inclusion got to do with it?

  • The introduction of an online portfolio system in a medical school: What can activity theory tell us?

    Glenn Mason, Vicki Langendyk, Shaoyu Wang

    In this paper we discuss innovations in the personal and professional development (PPD) curriculum that were introduced at a medical school in a major metropolitan university in Sydney, Australia. The review of the PPD curriculum involved the development of new content as well as the exploration of technologies that could be used to underpin the various collaborative, self-directed and reflective learning activities of the new course. An online portfolio system (PebblePad) was selected as the technological platform to deliver the new curriculum. Student feedback relating to the new technology has been critical and activity theory (AT) is used to broaden our understanding of the wider cultural forces - what we call the 'negative discourse of PPD' - that can potentially shape attitudes to technology and learning in the PPD component of a medical degree.

    Read article: The introduction of an online portfolio system in a medical school: What can activity theory tell us?

  • Engaging online students through the gamification of learning materials: The present and the future

    Naomi McGrath, Leopold Bayerlein

    The benefits of gamification in learning and instructional design to help engage and improve student learning online are investigated in this paper. The use of scenario-based learning and alternate reality gaming (ARG) are identified as key representations for improving user engagement, productivity and help shift away from classroom based learning activities towards fully self-paced and collaborative online activities. The paper outlines the reasoning behind, and the advantages of, using scenario-based and alternate reality gaming as an instructional tool in tertiary online education.

    Read article: Engaging online students through the gamification of learning materials: The present and the future

  • The current use of ICT by novice female teachers in Saudi primary schools and their perceived training needs

    Ensaf Al Mulhim

    The overall focus of this study is ICT in primary schools in Saudi Arabia, in particular the use made of ICT by novice female primary school teachers. This represents the first phase of a study that aims to discover whether a tailored training program might help teachers to widen and improve their use of ICT, and thus to improve their students' results. A questionnaire and semi- structured interviews were used in this phase to collect data. The findings revealed that the participants do suffer from a great gap in their knowledge and in even the basic technical and pedagogical skills of using technology in teaching. It was also found that their current use of technology is very low. The reasons behind this could include lack of access to technology, lack of training, and lack of time. The paper also presents some features of the participants' desired training program.

    Read article: The current use of ICT by novice female teachers in Saudi primary schools and their perceived training needs

  • Understanding the use of smart mobile technologies for learning in higher education

    Angela Murphey, Helen Farley, Andy Koronios

    This paper presents a preliminary exploration of the types of smart mobile technologies higher education students have access to and use to support their learning by comparing cohorts from two Australian universities with quite different profiles, the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) and the University of South Australia (UniSA). These results are briefly compared to those obtained in earlier studies in a broad attempt to identify trends in the use of mobile technologies to support learning over time. The results indicate that levels of smart phone ownership are rising rapidly with a corresponding drop in levels of feature phone ownership. Tablet computers such as iPads have emerged since the earlier studies were completed with high levels of adoption by students. Significantly, students are using these smart mobile devices to support their learning.

    Read article: Understanding the use of smart mobile technologies for learning in higher education

  • Enablers and Barriers to Academic's Acceptance of Technology: Can "Individual Differences" Make a Difference?

    Maimuna Musarrat, Birgit Loch, Benedict Williams

    With the advances in technology the higher education sector is rapidly evolving. While some researchers are predicting the University of the Future to be more virtual, many academics at the coal face are still struggling to embrace emerging technologies. This paper reports the first stage of a project aimed at identifying the enablers and barriers for adopting new technology among Australian Higher Education academics. In this pilot study, academics who have integrated Tablet PCs in their teaching were surveyed. For a richer understanding of the enablers and barriers of technology uptake, focus groups will follow. The next stages of this research will be a wider survey open to all academics across universities. The ultimate goal of this project is to generate recommendations for universities in better managing the technological change.

    Read article: Enablers and Barriers to Academic's Acceptance of Technology: Can "Individual Differences" Make a Difference?

  • Virtual Worlds for learning: Done and dusted?

    Christine Newman, Helen Farley, Sue Gregory, Lisa Jacka, Sheila Scutter, Marcus McDonald

    When Second Life first came to the attention of the mainstream media in 2007, educators recognised the potential of virtual worlds for teaching and learning. They seemed to be the ideal environments to facilitate authentic learning, alleviate the tyranny of distance for students not on campus, and provide an inexpensive and safe environment to teach skills that were too dangerous or expensive to teach in the real world. In spite of all this fanfare, virtual worlds have failed to gain significant traction in higher education. This paper outlines a preliminary investigation into the reasons why virtual worlds have not been adopted for learning and teaching. The reflections of the six authors on this topic were subjected to a thematic analysis with themes arranged under four broad topics. This information informed the development of a survey to be distributed more widely to further explore this phenomenon.

    Read article: Virtual Worlds for learning: Done and dusted?

  • Distributed Digital Essay: Academia connects with social media

    Fiona Nicolson, Sherrie Love, Mitch Parsell

    A key challenge faced by higher education is the evolution of assessment tasks to better suit the participatory and collaborative way in which our students use the web. This paper provides a model for a distributed digital essay that incorporates academic rigour with the peer discourse that has become the norm for digitally literate scholars active in social media. Our model is derived from a community of inquiry approach and prioritises students' engagement with the academic literature in their discipline. The model empowers the students to extend their learning community beyond the boundaries of their particular student cohort into a professional network. Students produce a digital artefact in which they expound their evidence-based knowledge and also demonstrate how they have used social media to test and consolidate their understanding. We provide an example that demonstrates how the distributed digital essay task was integrated into an online, postgraduate unit with an inquiry-based approach to learning.

    Read article: Distributed Digital Essay: Academia connects with social media

  • Dreams, hiccups and realities: What happens when lecturers and students co-design an online module?

    Maria Northcote, Beverly Christian

    Negotiating curriculum design with students for students involves incorporating both the students' needs and the lecturers' requirements into the course structure, learning activities, resources and assessment tasks. In 2012, two lecturers and a group of first year undergraduate students worked together to design an online module within an on-campus course for a second year teacher education degree. During the semester when the online module was conducted, data were gathered from the lecturers and students in the course. Findings from analyses of these data are presented in this paper in terms of: 1) the lecturers' and students' initial dreams and plans when the online module was co-designed; 2) the hiccups and problems encountered during the online module; 3) the realities of the successful aspects of the online module; and 4) the lessons learned for future emergent and negotiated curriculum design practices in higher education contexts.

    Read article: Dreams, hiccups and realities: What happens when lecturers and students co-design an online module?

  • Pipe dreams or digital dreams: Technology, pedagogy and content knowledge in the vocational educational and training sector

    Teresa O'Brien, Dorit Maor

    Regional Australia provides fertile ground for the integration of online technologies to support the vocational education and training (VET) sector. This paper examines teachers' beliefs about teaching with technology in a regional VET institute. VET teachers must demonstrate teaching expertise (pedagogical knowledge) and industry expertise (content knowledge) for diverse learners and contexts; however, the emergence of new digital technologies illustrates an increasing need for teachers to embrace 'technology' knowledge commensurate with industry practice. Recent surveys have revealed that teachers' use of online digital technology within the VET sector is not effectively incorporated nor has it been embraced in pedagogically defensible ways. This paper adopts a mixed methods approach to understand how the epistemic beliefs of VET teachers influence their teaching and how the TPACK is applied in practice. Finally, this paper illuminates the need for professional development programmes to focus on developing teacher knowledge across all TPACK domains.

    Read article: Pipe dreams or digital dreams: Technology, pedagogy and content knowledge in the vocational educational and training sector

  • Augmenting learning reality: iPads and software as cognitive tools

    James Oldfield, Jan Herrington

    In the three short years since the release of the iPad, it has become the object of substantial investment in a number of areas of education. This investment is driving the need for significant research into mobile device related teaching and pedagogy. The focus of this paper is on the first iteration of a design-based research study, which is informed by theories of authentic learning, cognitive tools and mobile learning. This paper is an introductory exploration into the use of iPads, and the apps and services they run, as cognitive tools in an authentic tertiary learning environment. This paper highlights a range of iPad apps and Web 2.0 services used in the study, and methods for their potential use to augment the learning experience in a business education context.

    Read article: Augmenting learning reality: iPads and software as cognitive tools

  • Imagining the future of assessment: For evidence, for credit and for payment

    Beverley Oliver, Kay Souter

    MOOCs are beginning to affect the business models of higher education providers by hastening the 'unbundling' of some of the central functions of higher education, particularly formal credit for learning and providing pathways to further study. This paper reports on Deakin University's work in this sphere in a newly launched MOOC, Humanitarian Responses to 21st Century Disasters. In this course, assessment has been 'flipped', so that instead of being examined, students are invited to demonstrate their achievements against learning outcomes and achieve peer credit badges that can be shared on LinkedIn and Facebook. If they choose, up to 100 students can also pay $495 for formal assessment. Those whose learning evidence is assessed as meeting all the requirements will be granted the equivalent of one subject credit when applying for entry to particular degree courses. This developing model may extend the benefits of higher education.

    Read article: Imagining the future of assessment: For evidence, for credit and for payment

Showing 92–104 of 130 articles