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2006: ASCILITE 2006 Conference Proceedings

The proceedings of the 2006 ASCILITE Conference.

L. Markauskaite, P. Goodyear, & P. Reimann (Eds.)  Who’s Learning? Whose Technology?                                                            University of Sydney, Australia

December 3-6, 2006.

Published: 30 November 2006

ASCILITE Conference - Full Papers

  • Monitoring eLearning environments through analysing web logs of institution-wide eLearning platforms

    Paul Lam, Christina Keing, Carmel McNaught, Kin-Fai Cheng

    Monitoring the use of web technology in teaching and learning activities at an institutional level can provide universities with valuable data to guide policy decision-making for eLearning support services. Like many other universities, The Chinese University of Hong Kong has centralized support to teachers and students through the provision of eLearning platforms, and training and educational advice on eLearning strategies. The paper examines how the logs kept in the centralized platforms support the University in monitoring eLearning at an institutional level. The logs provide information on three common areas of interest concerning web use: its popularity, nature of use and the engagement of the participants. The paper also illustrates, with data from the University, the analysis and reporting that can be done with the logs to enrich our understanding of the University’s eLearning in these three areas.

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  • Moving towards a university-wide implementation of an ePortfolio tool

    Sarah Lambert, Linda Corrin

    Monitoring the use of web technology in teaching and learning activities at an institutional level can provide universities with valuable data to guide policy decision-making for eLearning support services. Like many other universities, The Chinese University of Hong Kong has centralized support to teachers and students through the provision of eLearning platforms, and training and educational advice on eLearning strategies. The paper examines how the logs kept in the centralized platforms support the University in monitoring eLearning at an institutional level. The logs provide information on three common areas of interest concerning web use: its popularity, nature of use and the engagement of the participants. The paper also illustrates, with data from the University, the analysis and reporting that can be done with the logs to enrich our understanding of the University’s eLearning in these three areas.

    Read article: Moving towards a university-wide implementation of an ePortfolio tool

  • Modelling blended learning environments: Designing an academic development blog

    Geraldine Lefoe, Wendy Meyers

    A major challenge facing academic developers is meeting the development needs of both time poor academics and those staff in multi-location campuses, especially sessional tutors, who may start teaching several weeks before electronic access is enabled. Necessary restrictions placed on access to local intranet and Learning Management Systems meant rethinking how to meet the needs of all staff and in the process model good practice through the use of blended learning environments. One regional university, with seven national and one international campus, is currently redesigning their staff development program to incorporate the use of blogs and wikis to provide access for all staff to a collaborative space to support improved teaching. This paper provides a rationale for the new direction and outlines the design phase to incorporate the use of collaborative technologies within the staff development program. It outlines the challenges faced in designing the environment and provides an overview of the design for the pilot phase.

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  • Who’s designing what for whom? Comparing taxonomies in web-based educational design galleries

    Tim Lever

    Web-based galleries of educational design examples are a display space for educational innovation and a construction space for the educational identities involved in the growing educational innovation business. Taxonomies of seven web-based educational collections are compared and analysed in terms of how identities are constructed for the educational design model range, the teacher audience and educational design practice. The design collections struggle to form a coherent structural frame around their field of common interest not because they lack structures to build upon but through failure to deal with existing structures, starting with the common interest itself, shared by all without being clearly articulated by any. Other structural blind spots are apparent in the lack of representation for learning in workplace and community settings and in a failure to clearly distinguish the perspective of design user from that of design producer. A sharper focus on the user context in educational design classification would be helpful not only in improving the structure and usability of future educational design collections but also in facilitating communication generally between users and producers of educational design.

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  • Reusing learning designs: Role play adaptations of the Mekong and Ha Long Bay e-Sim

    Kate Lloyd, Melissa Butcher

    This paper reflects on the reuse and adaptation of a learning design in a different university context and in migrating from one lecturer to another. Building on and adapting the learning framework of the Mekong e-Sim (McLaughlan et al., 2001) the Ha Long Bay e- Sim forms the major assignment for students enrolled in the third year unit GEOS311 Asia Pacific Development (Department of Human Geography, Macquarie University). The e- Sim is a structured web-based role-play simulation designed to develop learners’ understanding of the multiple perspectives on issues related to development and conflict over the use of resources within the world heritage site of Ha Long Bay, Vietnam. This paper examines the experience of both the lecturers and students as the e-Sim was adapted over a four year period to meet changing student needs and a different university context, including reuse within a new operating environment and a diverse student base. Student perceptions of learning outcomes are analysed, revealing a positive response to the learning experience. The paper concludes with some recommendations on the reuse of an e-Sim learning design and identifies research and development questions for further investigation.

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  • Educational animation: Who should call the shots?

    Richard Lowe

    Despite the increasing popularity of animation for explaining dynamic subject matter, research shows it is not uniformly beneficial for learning. User control has been suggested as a way to enhance learning by ameliorating negative effects of animation. However, giving learners the responsibility for controlling how an animation presents its information does not always produce the anticipated benefits. It appears that the associated interrogation tasks can over-tax learners’ internal processing resources so that extraction of relevant information is prejudiced. More prescriptive animation presentation regimes may be superior to free user control, particularly for learners who are novices in the depicted domain.

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  • Is role-play an effective teaching approach to assist tertiary students to improve teamwork skills?

    Joseph Luca, Deanna Heal

    Often student teams become dysfunctional as a result of inexperience and lack of prior knowledge. This exploratory study implements and evaluates a framework that attempts to scaffold teamwork skills through role-play activities. The review highlighted five essential teamwork skills that are supported with teaching materials. The results indicated that measuring change in team performance is difficult. However, the study showed that role- play was an effective teaching approach and well received by the students.

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  • Bringing e-learning home: An experiment in embedding e-learning using departmental e-learning advocates

    Brett Lucas

    This paper provides an overview of an innovative project currently being undertaken in English departments in the United Kingdom. The project explores the effectiveness of a departmental or other subject-based unit approach to support for the embedding of e- learning in Higher Education. It seeks to provide answers to the question of how effective and sustainable e-learning practice can be encouraged in a departmental teaching community with a departmental e-learning advocate. Their role is to act as both a catalyst for change within a department and a source of practical help and advice for those wishing to make greater use of e-learning. Six departments, representing a range of contexts and modes of ‘advocacy’, have been selected for the 2006-7 academic year. The project aims to investigate whether we can be smarter about the integration of new technologies at subject level, while at the same time asking questions about the cultures within which academic and teaching communities understand, and come to terms with, the need to change their practice.

    Read article: Bringing e-learning home: An experiment in embedding e-learning using departmental e-learning advocates

  • iPod, uPod? An emerging mobile learning tool in nursing education and students’ satisfaction

    Margaret Maag

    An increasing number of healthcare educators are using mobile learning applications, such as educational podcasts, in order to facilitate and enhance students’ learning. Ubiquitous mobile technologies are becoming more important in healthcare training because of the scarcity of educators and the increase in the number of first- and second-degree students enrolling in schools of nursing. Academic podcasts provide students opportunities to access face-to-face or distance audio presentations and instructor feedback in a convenient manner. However, further adaptation of this popular technology requires empirical research in order to determine the impact of the mobile media revolution on instructional design and learning effectiveness. Nursing students enrolled in a medical-surgical didactic course report high satisfaction with this up-and-coming mobile multimedia educational opportunity.

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  • Who is learning? A preliminary study of an online elearning dissemination strategy

    Mary Jane Mahony

    Use of an online good practices site at the University of Sydney, the Health Sciences eLearning Resource Centre, was examined using WebCT visitor data. Results indicated continuing expansion of site awareness and demonstrated patterns of activity across the calendar year. Analysis of 2006 users made visible a substantial proportion categorised as providing online teaching support.

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  • Educational design and online support for an innovative project-based course in engineering design

    Iain McAlpine, Carl Reidsema, Belinda Allen

    A new course in Engineering Design and Innovation used a project-based learning approach to facilitate learning the design process, the development of design thinking and the skills required to solve open-ended design problems. The course involved over 950 first year students, in the Faculty of Engineering at the University of New South Wales. Students were enrolled in nine schools of engineering in the faculty. A WebCT Vista course was used to support student learning in design teams and to integrate and manage the course. Online facilitation methods were used to support student learning during several phases of the design process. Online peer assessment and review processes were used to encourage reflective learning and be time-efficient for academic staff. The paper includes survey data from the first offering of the course.

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  • What do first year students think about learning graphics packages?

    Joshua McCarthy

    This paper discusses the assessment of the change from Auto-des-sys’s FormZ to @Last’s Sketch Up as the primary CAD program in first semester, first year, delivered through a new compulsory course, Human Environments: Design and Representation, and the introduction of a graphic design based elective course, Imaging Our World, in the School of Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Urban Design at The University of Adelaide. The evaluation process involved pre and post semester questionnaires, weekly feedback from students and course SELTS. The aim is to accurately determine students’ interests in digital media in design and to introduce new and relevant digital media components into the undergraduate degree to provide a suitable and structured lead-in to the Masters of Digital Media program.

    Read article: What do first year students think about learning graphics packages?

  • Chinese higher education teachers’ conceptions of e-Learning: Preliminary outcomes

    David McConnell, Jianhua Zhao

    Over the past three years, the Centre for Studies in Advanced Learning Technologies, Lancaster University, and the School of Network Learning, Beijing Normal University, have been involved in the development of e-Learning courses and in carrying out research into e-Learning. During this collaboration, we became aware of cultural differences in our approaches to the design and implementation of e-Learning courses. This led us to consider the differences and similarities in our conceptions of e-Learning, and their effects on the design, development and implementation of e-Learning courses. A new comparative research project looking at UK and Chinese higher education teachers’ conceptions of e- Learning was established. This paper reports on preliminary results of phenomenographic interviews with higher education teachers in China working in ‘conventional, campus-based universities concerning their conceptions of e-Learning. The interviews were analysed from a grounded theory perspective that resulted in a set of preliminary conceptual categories namely the centrality of the lecture, online cooperative learning, network learning, student learning, and infrastructure and access. Discussion of these categories is presented which illuminates the state of e-Learning in Chinese higher education. We conclude that the dominance of traditional teaching methods in China is unlikely to present the conditions for mainstreaming e-Learning in the near future.

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Showing 53–65 of 121 articles