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2009: ASCILITE 2009 Conference Proceedings

 

The proceedings of the 2009 ASCILITE Conference

R. J. Atkinson, & C. McBeath (Eds.) (2009), Same places, different spaces. Proceedings ASCILITE 2009. Auckland.

University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand.

December 6-9 2009

ASCILITE2009 Conference Website  https://www.ascilite.org/conferences/auckland09/

Published: 1 December 2009

ASCILITE Conference - Concise Papers

  • The cachet of constraint: Learners, ownership and power

    John Pettit

    The innovation explored in this paper reveals some of the complexities of power and ownership that practitioners need to negotiate if they are to create institutional spaces where learners can find their own voice. The paper sheds light on current debates about personal learning environments versus VLEs, and argues that an either/or approach is unnecessarily limiting. It proposes, instead, that practitioners will be able to operate more effectively if they recognize the diversity of actors and influences that shape the spaces in which learning takes place. The paper tests this proposition by examining the introduction of a synchronous online tool, highlighting the practitioner values that the project team revealed in its pedagogic choices.

    Read article: The cachet of constraint: Learners, ownership and power

  • Peer review of teaching practice and resources: Exploring new spaces to embrace cultural change

    Robyn Philip, Helen Wozniak

    The implementation of systematic peer review as a professional development activity, and as a support for educational design activities is under-utilised in many Australian higher education institutions. This case study reports on the first stages of planning and implementation of an institution-wide project to enhance teaching and learning quality at a remote and regional university, where one of the major strategies for improvement is peer review. Through a systematic process of staff engagement in peer review, within and from outside the organisation, a substantial change in flexible learning is envisaged. A mix of new and different learning spaces are to be used in the project, including blended learning spaces for academic development. This paper describes the research framework that will guide the peer review process and examines the early findings of the design-based research. Leadership, awareness raising and development of a supportive community of inquiry are seen as key components for successful implementation of peer review. In addition, unique contextual elements add to the complexity of designing for transformative change within such a relatively new organization.

    Read article: Peer review of teaching practice and resources: Exploring new spaces to embrace cultural change

  • Students’ expectations of the Virtual Maternity Clinic

    Diane Phillips, Maxine Duke, Cate Nagle, Susie Macfarlane, Glenn McNolty, Peter Lane, Ian Fox, Denise Patterson

    The aim for the Virtual Maternity Clinic (VMC) is to engage students in learning about the role of the midwife and care of women during early pregnancy. The VMC, using Deakin Studies Online as a platform, includes LiveSim, videoed characters and Adobe Flash of four pregnant women with diverse issues. From an evaluation distributed to students prior to access of the VMC to identify their expectations, we found that undergraduate students wanted to learn how to interact with women during early pregnancy, whereas postgraduate students wanted strategies to learn about midwifery practice. Further development of the VMC is progressing to include a suite of programs incorporating the care of women during late pregnancy, labour and birth; and the time after birth.

    Read article: Students’ expectations of the Virtual Maternity Clinic

  • eScience: Evaluating electronic laboratory notebooks in chemistry research

    Rosanne Quinnell, D. Brynn Hibbert, Andrew Milsted

    The School of Chemistry at UNSW is undertaking a trial of an electronic laboratory notebook (ELN) with selected honours and postgraduate research students. This ELN was developed at the University of Southampton and has been designed to accommodate the diversity of research in science. The concept of an ELN is that all the data from instruments, the observations of a researcher, their notes, thoughts, etc, will be captured within the ELN. The UNSW/Southampton ELN is a blog of each researcher’s experiments, which resides on a secure server and is accessed through the web. It is intended that data will be readily retrievable for creating presentations, writing papers and ultimately the student’s thesis. The project has obtained a number of input devices (e.g. netbook, tablet and notebook PCs, PDA) and will trial their use with the web site. The central part of this trial is the perceptions of staff and students as to the merits of adopting an ELN and the usefulness of an ELN to access experimental data more efficiently and to enhance communication between students and their supervisor(s).

    Read article: eScience: Evaluating electronic laboratory notebooks in chemistry research

  • Benchmarking across universities: A framework for LMS analysis

    Lynnae Rankine, Leigh Stevenson, Janne Malfroy, Kevin Ashford-Rowe

    Enterprise wide learning management systems are integral to university learning and teaching environments. Griffith University and the University of Western Sydney (UWS) are predominantly face-to-face, multi-campus teaching institutions with similar size student bodies and academic communities. Both Griffith and UWS utilise a single enterprise wide e-learning system, although the systems are different. This paper describes a benchmarking activity between the two universities to determine the level and quality of the uptake of the e-learning system. A framework was developed as a product of the partnership and applied to a representative sample of e-learning sites. The results of the benchmarking exercise showed that there are parallel trends between the two institutions in how the LMS is being used, however with distinct differences in specific areas.

    Read article: Benchmarking across universities: A framework for LMS analysis

  • Developing surgical decision making skills through dynamic branching short cases and reflection

    Sarah Rennie, Phil Blyth, Judith Swan, Joy Rudland, Katherine Hall, Susan Baxter, Michael Tweed, Tim Wilkinson, John Dockerty, Andre van Rij, Swee Kin Loke, Michael Winikoff, Peter Vlugter, Ayelet Cohen, Jenny McDonald

    This paper describes the development of reflective branching short cases to facilitate medical student’s acquisition of surgical decision-making skills. Decision-making skills are an important attribute of a competent surgeon. However, the acquisition of decision making skills is often not explicit in medical curricula and is developed by experience after graduation. Formative dynamic branching cases were developed for students to interact with, as part of a surgical decision-making eLearning site. The cases require students to make and reflect on decisions. Feedback is provided about the decision-making process, with links to eTutorials providing more information about decision making factors. Initial feedback from student testers indicates they welcome this learning strategy and feel that it encourages them to be more reflective about their decision-making skills. Interactive branching short cases with a focus on decision-making factors enable students to practice the three recognised modes of reflection; reflection in-action, on-action and for-action.

    Read article: Developing surgical decision making skills through dynamic branching short cases and reflection

  • Teachers as active agents in recontextualising pedagogic spaces in vocational education and training

    Ian Robertson

    This paper shows that policy reforms in Vocational Education and Training in Australia since the late 1980s developed with the specific intention of reforming the official pedagogic discourse and associated pedagogic spaces that existed at that time. The discourses of flexible delivery, flexible learning, online learning, e-learning and blended learning established pedagogic spaces that are described in terms of the primary purposes, actors, rules and resources that have characterised each. Drawing on the idea of recontextualisation, an existing model is used as a basis to propose a representation of the dynamics that shape practice in the transition from one pedagogic space to another. This model portrays teachers as active agents in the recontextualisation of official policy discourse. A proposition that challenges the ideas of rational actor theory that underpins assumptions about the implementation of policy changes in VET.

    Read article: Teachers as active agents in recontextualising pedagogic spaces in vocational education and training

  • Simulating clinical experience: Exploring Second Life as a learning tool for nurse education

    Luke Rogers

    Healthcare professionals have established that experience gained through simulation is a fundamental learning activity in developing competent nurses. An emerging technology that has, up to now, had little consideration as a clinical simulation platform is three- dimensional multi-user virtual environments. The purpose of this study was to explore Second Life as a clinical simulation platform, based on the attitudes and experiences of a sample of undergraduate nursing students. Teams of self-selected students were placed in separate locations and participated in a clinical simulation developed in Second Life. The simulation involved a series of problem-based scenarios which incorporated concepts of technical skills, patient interaction, team work, and situational awareness. Results from a set of investigative interviews provided evidence to support Second Life as a learning format for simulating clinical experience.

    Read article: Simulating clinical experience: Exploring Second Life as a learning tool for nurse education

  • Integrating e-portfolios: Putting the pedagogy in its place

    Jennifer L. Rowley, Peter Dunbar-Hall

    E-portfolio’s have been a feature in teacher education degree programs as a means to document professional accreditation (Gerbic & Maher, 2008). The development of a professional e-portfolio for pre-service music education students has challenged teacher educators in a NSW university music Faculty as it was essential to embed the processes of creating a student e-portfolio across the four-year music education degree program that allowed students high levels of independence and creativity in the presentation of themselves as both reflective learners and professional practitioners (musician and music teacher). This poster presents a work in progress describing the processes of introducing e- portfolios into a music education degree program and discusses the initial design issues of blended learning, the methodology used to embed e-portfolios into existing Units of Study, assessment, the pedagogical possibilities for engaging students in a technology rich learning environment and other conceptual issues that arose in the design process.

    Read article: Integrating e-portfolios: Putting the pedagogy in its place

  • Basic Science Alive: Linking science knowledge to clinical practice

    Joy R. Rudland, Judith Swan, Phil Blyth, Michael Winikoff, Jenny McDonald, Swee Kin Loke, Richard Zeng, Ayelet Cohen

    This paper describes an e-learning package, Basic Science Alive (BSA) that aims to facilitate undergraduate medical students’ integration of basic science to clinical scenarios. The educational emphasis is on students constructing their own links between theory and practice and the process of peer review. There are three main components of the package: the writing of a short structured essay (presentation) demonstrating the linkage of basic science to a specific clinical scenario; the opportunity to review and comment on colleagues’ presentations; and the value of receiving feedback through multiple choice questions (MCQs) and peer comments. This paper specifically focuses on the peer review element, including the perceived learning of the reviewee through receiving the comments, and the learning of the reviewer through interaction with the presentation and formulating feedback to the reviewer.

    Read article: Basic Science Alive: Linking science knowledge to clinical practice

  • Different spaces: Staff development for Web 2.0

    Gayani Samarawickrema, Robyn Benson, Charlotte Brack

    This paper reports on a collaborative staff development activity run across two Australian universities, for academic staff integrating Web 2.0 technologies into their teaching. It describes a three-week long virtual workshop, on teaching with wikis where participants in two groups developed a group project as students and then assessed the work as teachers. Participants were guided through a central Wikis in Higher Education wiki which provided the resources and communication supports. The experience suggested that teaching in a Web 2.0 space requires new thinking about pedagogy and that peer learning and the development of an online community are helpful for effective professional development. In closing, the paper reflects on the successes and limitations of this virtual workshop model.

    Read article: Different spaces: Staff development for Web 2.0

  • A conceptual model for the educational deployment of QR codes

    Sarah-Jane Saravani, John Clayton

    As mobile internet adoption increases, mobile engagement with information and access to services becomes increasingly routine. However, m-learning implementations are currently input dependent. The protracted methods of accessing stored information and services through phone-pad input functionalities is time-consuming, frustrating and serves to limit the uptake of m-initiatives. To increase the impact of m-deployments, to enhance flexibility of provision and also to advance the personalisation of learning, a number of institutions are using Quick Response (QR) Codes and Mobile Tags (MT) which allow users with embedded camera phones ready access to information and services. However, the increasing use of QR/MT creates challenges for the institution, for example, managing changes in approaches to learning, secondly, making informed investment decisions, and finally, evaluating impact. This paper describes a conceptual framework used by the Waikato Institute of Technology to integrate QR/MT within their current policies, procedures and institutional ICT infrastructure.

    Read article: A conceptual model for the educational deployment of QR codes

  • Comparison analysis of the online lecture formats of PowerPoint and Webpage for online students

    Daniela Signor

    While many studies have been conducted on students’ experiences when comparing face- to-face teaching to online teaching, these have not focused solely on the delivery format. Many lectures have simply been placed online from the equivalent on-campus version and are in the PowerPoint format, and so do not use the online medium to its best advantage. This study will look at online students’ opinion of a PowerPoint lecture, a Webpage lecture and their comparison. This paper reports on the outcomes from two surveys taken by online students, enrolled through Open Universities Australia, studying an introductory Swinburne University IT unit. This study will evaluate the delivery format of the online learning lectures with the aim of improving the online learning material. The findings indicate that online students prefer Webpage to PowerPoint for text-based online lectures.

    Read article: Comparison analysis of the online lecture formats of PowerPoint and Webpage for online students

Showing 118–130 of 141 articles