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2018: ASCILITE 2018 Conference Proceedings

 

 

 

 

The proceedings of the 2018 ASCILITE Conference. Open Oceans: Learning Without Borders

M. Campbell, J. Willems, C. Adachi, D. Blake, I. Doherty, S. Krishnan, S. Macfarlane, L. Ngo, M. O’Donnell, S. Palmer, L. Riddell, I. Story, H. Suri & J. Tai (Eds.), Open Oceans: Learning Without Borders. Proceedings ASCILITE 2018. Geelong.

Deakin University, Geelong, Australia

November 25-28 2018

ASCILITE2018 Conference Website https://2018conference.ascilite.org/

 

Published: 20 November 2018

ASCILITE Conference - Full Papers

  • Change is difficult: Making it happen and making it stick

    Josephine Hook, Barbara Macfarlan, Tammy Smith

    Monash University is transforming its educational offering with a focus on students actively engaging in their learning experiences with educators changing their teaching practice so as to make that happen. The disruption to traditional approaches to education through innovative curricula, multi-faceted modes of delivery and purposeful learning spaces is challenging our educators to think about how students learn, and how to provide students with a quality educational experience. The University has employed a group of Educational Designers (EDs) and embedded these in each of the ten faculties to lead the change. The EDs interpret and implement the University education agenda within their faculties, partnering with academics to innovate teaching and learning across the University. This paper draws on case study methodology utilising two case studies, from the Arts and Science Faculties, to demonstrate how the EDs have enabled sustainable educational transformation. Despite working across ten faculties with various foci for enhancement, the EDs have coordinated their efforts to build staff capacity and resilience through a range of practical support strategies and programs. The strength of this support is grounded in the relationships that they are able to develop with our academic partners over time.

    Read article: Change is difficult: Making it happen and making it stick

  • Surveying the digital literacy landscape for academic and professional staff in higher education

    Elaine Huber, Courtney Shalavin

    In order to produce digitally literate graduates, it is necessary for institutions to have digitally literate staff. While this statement seems clear, the commitment and approach of Australian Higher Education institutions to professional learning focused on digital literacies is not. This paper describes initial steps towards clarifying the place of digital literacies in the context of professional learning for higher education staff. The researchers canvassed 31 higher education websites to identify institutional approaches, and conducted a targeted literature review to uncover models and practices that could have transposal value to institutions. This paper reports on which institutions are publicly committed, which units are typically responsible for digital literacy, the reasoning for institutional approaches and key themes in pedagogical designs. It is the beginning of a conversation, in an effort to distil the muddy waters that digital literacies occupies and generate greater transparency and understanding between educators in the Australian Higher Education context.

    Read article: Surveying the digital literacy landscape for academic and professional staff in higher education

  • Digital disruption meets the academic timetable: Start learning anytime

    Trina Jorre de St Jorre, Beverley Oliver, Jeff Chamberlain

    Many universities claim to provide flexible learning opportunities, but most still require students to keep pace with prescribed curriculum delivery and assessment deadlines, and few have disrupted the academic calendar. In this paper, we report on an innovation called ‘Start anytime’ that was purposefully designed to break from a trimester model and instead give students the flexibility to study in their own space and pace online. Here we report on measures put in place to support students during self-paced online study, and share insights from research investigating students’ expectations and experience of ‘Start anytime’. For many students, the self-management required for self-paced study was a challenge, but for most students those challenges were out weighted by the benefits of flexible learning. Importantly, the majority of students thought that access to learning support and teaching staff was the same or better in ‘Start anytime’ units than in a timetabled unit, and many students found that self-paced study was easier and more enjoyable. Thus, we have shown that where it is carefully designed and supported, self-paced online learning and disruption of the academic calendar, can have considerable benefits for experienced adult learners who have difficulty fitting study around their busy lives.

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  • University-run learning and teaching blogs: A benchmarking study

    Olga Kozar, Lucy Arthur, Rhiannon Hall, Danny Liu

    Providing relevant information, professional development and just-in-time support to a diverse group of teaching staff is a challenge facing many modern universities. A ‘typical’ university instructor today is time-poor, relatively isolated and has a limited capacity to engage in professional development and/or community building. Moreover, most of the teaching in Australian universities is performed by sessional staff (May, Strachan, & Peetz, 2013; Rothengatter & Hil, 2013), who are often not remunerated for professional development. A contemporary approach by which universities seem to be addressing the above issues is the learning and teaching blog. Such publications are adopted by an increasing number of institutions in Australia and internationally, however, little has been documented about their practices. This benchmarking study presents a survey of 12 learning and teaching blogs from Australian and overseas institutions and seeks to shed light on common types of content and topics, as well as the purpose and authorship of such blogs. The findings can be used to inform planning and development of university-run learning and teaching blogs.

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  • New E-learning 3.0 platform proposal and evaluation

    Yifei Liang, Tian Liang, Pedro Isaias

    This research will explore how to improve the current University of Queensland (UQ) “BlackBoard” system, so that it fulfills the E-learning 3.0 requirements. Therefore, after adapting literature review methodology, a new E-learning platform will be designed and built, and it will be tested by the focus group for further development. Functions such as video and text chatting, file sharing and others, will be initially implemented to ensure it is an E-learning platform. The research will then be able to realize functions, such as recommendations of relevant learning materials, by using Web 3.0 technology, in particular the basic semantic analysis. The whole research aims to increase learning efficiency and provide students with a better learning experience. The research is co-operated by two researchers. Although sharing a mutual goal, the researchers will each have a separate focus. One will focus on developing text chatting, file sharing, records checking, relevant materials recommendation functions and other contents like user interfaces, while the other will focus on developing video chatting, room creation, login, and relevant functions as identified and recommended by tutors. On completion of these processes, the identified key improvements and modifications will be applied.

    Read article: New E-learning 3.0 platform proposal and evaluation

  • Keeping everyone OnTask: Gauging the impact of personalised feedback through academic case studies

    Lisa Lim, Sandra Barker, Anthea Fudge, Steve Kelly

    Student-directed feedback is an important factor in student achievement. However, contemporary higher education presents challenges for instructors to be able to provide timely and personalised feedback, especially in the context of large courses. Learning analytics can be employed as a viable solution to the challenges of feedback provision, as it draws on learner engagement data and individual progress to enable personalised learning feedback to students. Many student-facing LA reporting systems have been developed, but these have been criticised as being too generic to be useful for stakeholders. Recently, research has begun to explore more contextualised LA-based approaches to feedback, which allow instructors to select relevant metrics of engagement to provide personalised feedback to students. This paper describes three case studies currently being carried out at one Australian higher education institution, which employs one such system, referred to as OnTask. The considerations of using such systems are discussed.

    Read article: Keeping everyone OnTask: Gauging the impact of personalised feedback through academic case studies

  • Visualizing Learner Behaviour in MOOCs using Sankey Diagrams

    Karsten Lundqvist, Michael Godinez, Steven Warburton

    It can be difficult to assess the design of, and learning, within Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). It is especially hard when trying to analyse this at the level of the individual learner. This study has developed a tool, inspired by Sankey diagrams, to visualise learners’ behaviour and paths through MOOC content. This tool can be used to investigate if learners are interacting with the content as planned when the course was designed. It has been designed iteratively through four stages of rapid prototyping. This paper presents the narrative of the development of the tool with an emphasis on validation via feedback from three user groups at each prototype stage.

    Read article: Visualizing Learner Behaviour in MOOCs using Sankey Diagrams

  • Typed versus handwritten essay exams: Is there a need to recalibrate the gauges for digital assessment?

    Elizabeth Masterman

    In moving from handwritten to typed essay-based examinations (e-exams), the salient issue from an academic perspective is equivalence: can exams in the two modes be considered the same? This paper reports the findings of a literature survey addressing this question, conducted prior to a trial of e-exams at a leading university. The survey sought to establish whether the move results in changes in students’ strategies when composing an exam answer, and the resulting product, and changes in academics’ perception of typed exam scripts and their strategies in marking on screen. The research team concluded that the two modes of exam are not equivalent, even though differences in the marks achieved by students may be statistically insignificant. Recommendations arising from the analysis include moving to e-exams as the sole mode; supporting students and academics to develop IT proficiency for assessment; and capitalizing on the analytics available in e-exam tools to minimize the inequities that arise when exams are conducted in a single mode.

    Read article: Typed versus handwritten essay exams: Is there a need to recalibrate the gauges for digital assessment?

  • Designing for learning with mobile and social media tools: A pragmatic approach

    Vickel Narayan, Jan Herrington, Thom Cochrane

    Over the last decade, mobile and social media (MSM) tools have been in a constant flux. A growing ecology of tools and affordances have enabled multiple types of user actions and abilities never witnessed or imagined before. Educators all around the world are actively exploring and investigating learning and teaching design and approaches to harness some of these opportunities for improved student learning outcomes. This paper discusses the findings from a PhD study that used a design- based research approach to investigate how MSM tools could be used to facilitate learner-driven and determined learning (heutagogy). A set of draft design principles was formulated to guide the development of a course—implemented and evaluated over two years. A summary of the findings from the study is discussed and a set of refined design principles is provided—capable of guiding educators in designing significant learning experiences using MSM tools.

    Read article: Designing for learning with mobile and social media tools: A pragmatic approach

  • Struggle town? : Developing profiles of student confusion in simulation-based learning environments

    Sadia Nawaz, Gregor Kennedy, James Bailey, Chris Mead, Lev Horodyskyj

    A considerable amount of research on emotions and learning has been undertaken in recent years. Confusion has been noted as a particularly important emotion as it has the potential to trigger students’ engagement in learning tasks. However, unresolved confusion may turn into frustration, boredom and ultimately disengagement. The study reported in this paper investigated whether learning analytics could be used to successfully determine indicators or patterns of interactions that may be associated with confusion in a simulation-based learning environment. The findings of the study indicated that when taken individually, measures on specific learning tasks only hint at when students are struggling, but when taken together these indicators present a pattern of student interactions or a student profile that could be indicative of confusion.

    Read article: Struggle town? : Developing profiles of student confusion in simulation-based learning environments

  • Re-thinking LMS change: Designing authentic learning environments to improve lecturers’ digital literacy

    Ekaterina Pechenkina, Elizabeth Branigan

    This paper reports on a qualitative evaluation of the first phase of an iterative, university-wide process of transitioning all units of study into a new Learning Management System (LMS). Lecturers in charge of the first group of units undergoing transition were interviewed, the goal of this being for their experiences of the process to inform its next stages, which would involve larger unit cohorts. The change process was designed with the principles of the authentic learning environment at its core and had academic professional development in digital literacy built in into its design, in hopes of enabling sustainable and scalable teaching transformation. The evaluation sought to ascertain how lecturers experienced the process of LMS change in the context of their teaching. Recommendations are offered pertaining to the change process design elements that promise to enhance lecturers’ digital literacy and inspire teaching transformation.

    Read article: Re-thinking LMS change: Designing authentic learning environments to improve lecturers’ digital literacy

  • Actionable recommendations for redesigning a pre-clinical dental course: Simulations and students’ perceptions of epistemic setting

    Punyanit Rungnava, Lina Markauskaite, Peter Goodyear

    Simulations are increasingly used in dental education for developing students’ dexterity skills and improving the effectiveness of pre-clinical practice and assessment. The challenge is to embed these technologies into larger instructional frameworks, and to make contemporary teaching and learning practices and environments effective. This study focuses on investigating current simulation-based practices in a pre-clinical laboratory course in a Thai dental school. The purpose is to identify the aspects of the course design that need improvement. Ethnography is used to explore the current situation while an activity-centred analysis and design (ACAD) framework is used to analyse the design of arrangements in the laboratory setting (Goodyear & Carvalho, 2014). This paper reports some results from the students’ interviews after the simulation-based laboratory practice. It focuses on epistemic affordances and constraints and shows that these affordances and constraints are not solely embedded in the design of the simulation system, but emerge with the activity from the interaction between the students’ personal resources that they bring to the situation and design of the broader learning environment. We illustrate how these results could be used for offering actionable recommendations for improving the course design.

    Read article: Actionable recommendations for redesigning a pre-clinical dental course: Simulations and students’ perceptions of epistemic setting

  • Inclusive design in a virtual world serious game to improve adult literacy: Problems, possibilities and tensions

    Erica Southgate, Shamus P. Smith, Richard Langridge, Maree Gruppetta

    Use of theoretical frameworks can be powerful reflective thinking tools when developing new digital tools for learning. For maximum utility, digital learning tools should be designed to be inclusive of human difference. The purpose of this paper is to provide a case study on the application of an inclusive design framework in the development of a virtual world serious game designed to improve the literacy of learners in tertiary education. This paper provides a critical perspective on applying an inclusive design framework including problems, possibilities and ongoing tension in the project involved in deploying the game to both mobile devices and via head mounted display. Understanding both the strength and potential fallibility of theoretical frameworks such as inclusive design is important in developing impactful technological solutions to enduring social and educational problems.

    Read article: Inclusive design in a virtual world serious game to improve adult literacy: Problems, possibilities and tensions

Showing 14–26 of 83 articles