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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

  • Mediated electronic discourse and computational linguistic analysis: Improving learning through choice of effective communication methods

    Rachel Panckhurst

    The author conducted research on the ways in which electronic mail, forums and chats are used within an online distance, open and virtual learning environment (WebCT) at a French University, for both on and off-campus students. This article briefly describes research on how computational linguistic analyses help us understand language evolution in the context of higher/further education and research. Results may lead teachers and tutors to choose more effective communication methods, thereby improving overall learning.

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  • A pragmatic and strategic approach to supporting staff in inclusive practices for online learning

    Elaine Pearson, Tony Koppi

    Changes in legislation, an emphasis on widening participation and the increasing reliance on online techniques for learning and teaching have contributed to improved opportunities for students with disabilities to participate in Higher Education. Many accessibility advocates would argue that accessibility should be the primary consideration for the development of online resources, but in the academic setting it is usually teaching staff who are largely responsible for the production of their own electronic resources. Academics may lack the time, expertise and the motivation to undertake inclusive practices. This paper explores means of supporting academic staff in the creation of accessible and inclusive online learning materials through activities designed to create an empathy with the student experience, coupled with targeted, timely and appropriate training. We go on to outline the proposals for incorporating accessibility into an institutional strategy for e-learning and proposals for further research.

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  • Going with the grain: Mobile devices in practice

    John Pettit, Agnes Kukulska-Hulme

    Fifty-seven alumni of a global Masters programme participated in research into their use of mobile devices. Drawing on questionnaire and interview data, the paper examines how far the devices were embedded in the personal and professional lives of these alumni, most of whom were aged 35–54. All had experience of online and distance education, and most worked in education or training. The study revealed some innovative uses of mobile devices, a selection of which is reported in this paper. The paper links the findings to wider debates about the changing relationship between learners and educational institutions, and the role of mobile devices in enabling individuals to engage in learning conversations. Data are provided on which devices were used by the alumni and for what purposes, and the paper explores the implications of these findings for educators.

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  • Implementing new technologies across the organisation: The LAMS@Macquarie project

    Robyn Philip, Angela Voerman

    The LAMS @ Macquarie University Implementation Project is an enterprise-wide project which aims to develop and promote the use of LAMS (the Learning Activity Management System) across the University. This paper is a brief exploration of some of the early indications from the research conducted during Stage 1. We consider some of the challenges of adopting the next generation of e-learning tools, in particular the issues surrounding adoption and dissemination, establishment of a community of practice, and creation and sharing of reusable learning designs.

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  • Tools used in Learning Management Systems: Analysis of WebCT usage logs

    Rob Phillips

    This paper investigates the use of tools within WebCT Campus Edition 4. Internal usage tracking data was analysed to determine the extent of use of WebCT tools within individual units of study at five universities, primarily Murdoch University. An innovative algorithm, using a geometric distribution, was used to categorise use of the tools. The research found that WebCT was heavily used in a teacher-centred mode, with the majority of use in provision of content to students, and in students reading messages from their lecturers. Tool use which emphasised student-centred learning was only apparent in a small number of cases. These results were relatively comparable with those from four other universities. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of the observed behaviour.

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  • Repurposing an online tutor training resource

    Jenny Pizzica, Mary Jane Mahony, Elizabeth Devonshire

    This paper presents a reflective case study that illustrates the challenges associated with repurposing, for the human health sciences, an existing high-quality staff development and tutor resource website originally developed by the Faculty of Veterinary Sciences at the University of Sydney. The discussion focuses on the experience of negotiating, planning, and executing repurposing the site for staff development and tutor support in postgraduate programs offered by the Faculties of Health Sciences and Medicine. Benefits and challenges associated with repurposing this resource within the same overall university context are considered.

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  • Learning from Web 2.0 practices: A tool to support real- time student collaboration

    Tim Plaisted, Stuart Irvine

    This paper describes the conceptual design of a prototype tool, currently in development, that facilitates productive collaboration in a synchronous environment. The tool could be used to bring the benefits of a tutorial to lecture and online environments. The design and development is based on successful Web 2.0 practices, and its use is considered in terms of an interpretation of Laurillard's Conversational Framework. The outcome of the development project is a generic tool that enables a shift of some facilitation activities from a learner-teacher mode of delivery to a learner-peer supported network. Suggested uses of this tool are discussed including tasks involving analysis, synthesis and evaluation. Finally methods to integrate the tool into assessment processes are presented.

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  • Supporting peer assessment of individual contributions in groupwork

    Richard Raban, Andrew Litchfield

    The ability to assess the work of others is a core attribute for most professionals. To develop this graduate attribute in our students requires the learning of self and peer evaluation, feedback, and review skills. This paper discusses the changing design of peer assessment and the impact of a new groupwork support tool within a capstone undergraduate subject with large student numbers - Systems Development Project – in the Faculty of Information Technology at UTS. Since 1998 by implementing different support strategies for peer assessment of individual contributions the distribution of the students marks has markedly widened, and now more reflect the reality of differing team member contributions. This substantial change has occurred with the use of an online tool which supports the development of student evaluation, feedback and review skills when peer-assessing individual contributions to large group projects. In use since 2004 the groupwork support tool is called Team Contribution Tracking (TeCTra).

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  • Fun and feedback at the press of a button

    Debbie Richards, Catherine Braiding, Alan Vaughan

    A common phenomenon across disciplines and universities is that students complain that they do not receive enough feedback, even when student evaluation forms indicate satisfaction in other areas such as teacher competency and enthusiasm. On the other side, but less considered, is the lack of feedback that teachers receive as they struggle to get students to participate and engage with the learning process. While technology does not offer an automatic solution, keypad-based automatic response systems do offer the potential to let both parties know how well the learning outcomes are being achieved in a timely and cost-effective manner. We have just completed two years of pilot trialling of such technology at our university in the Computing and Physics Departments. This paper reports our experiences together with the findings of others.

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  • The evolution of audiographics: A case study of audiographics teaching in a business faculty

    Steve Rowe, Allan Ellis, Tran Quoc Bao

    Audiographics was an established educational technology prior to the development and spread of the World Wide Web (Web) in the early 1990s. First generation audiographics products used bridged telephone lines (audio) and modem linked computers (graphics) to synchronously connect an instructor with groups of students. In the second half of the 1990s the use of the Web increased dramatically and traditional audiographics use declined. Since the early 2000s, and as part of the development of a second generation of Web services, Web 2.0, a new generation of audiographics tools, now commonly termed collaborative or Web conferencing software, have become available. This evolution of the audiographics technology and its associated instructional capabilities is explored via a longitudinal case study of the use of audiographics in the Faculty of Business at Southern Cross University. Following a review of the first and second generation products used, we identify and show how four key lessons from the initial period of use have been addressed. We focus particularly on how the fourth lesson (flexibility of the delivery format) has been addressed and present preliminary data gathered from early student and staff adopters about their use of second generation audiographics during Semester 2 of 2005 and Semester 1 of 2006. We conclude by briefly discussing some potential developments and suggesting that second generation audiographics offers the opportunity to seriously re-think the nature of student-to-student and student-to-staff communications in the context of our learning and teaching environment.

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  • E-Scholars: Staff development through designing for learning

    Diane Salter

    Although the importance of engaging students in learning through interactivity during the learning process is well documented, faculty and instructional developers often fail to consider learning design during the curriculum design process. In face-to-face and online courses, curriculum is often developed by staff in isolation, with a focus on presenting content rather than on learning design that promotes student engagement with content as well as interaction with peers and instructor. This paper describes the design, implementation, evaluation and next steps of the ‘e-Scholars Programme’, an innovative approach to staff development designed to guide faculty as a cohort to successfully integrate online learning with the face-to-face classroom using the T5 instructional design model (Salter, Richards, & Carey, 2003, 2004) to expand the learning environment.

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  • Design and evaluation of an e-learning environment to support the development and refinement of clinical reasoning and decision-making

    Justin Newton Scanlan, Catherine McLoughlin, Nicola Hancock

    Emerging paradigms of clinical reasoning skills are tending to veer away from linear and clinical competencies towards generic professional skills and decision making processes. In the present study, occupational therapy students have previously complained that they do not receive enough support from the university or their peers during fieldwork placements, when they are expected to demonstrate clinical reasoning skills. Supervisors have observed that occupational therapy students, as novices, have difficulty in demonstrating strong clinical reasoning skills in the fieldwork setting. In this situation, the end-user (i.e. the patient or client) may not receive the optimal level of care and it is therefore imperative to scaffold students’ reasoning skills to prepare them as working professionals. This paper will explore the design and evaluation of a moderated online forum to support the development and refinement of clinical reasoning (a form of critical thinking) skills in occupational therapy students undergoing fieldwork placements. An innovative analytic content-based instrument derived from current models of clinical reasoning is applied to a corpus of data to measure students’ skills, and on the basis of results obtained, to suggest ways of enhancing the online environment to support emerging decision-making skills among novice practitioners.

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  • Impact on student learning: Student evaluations of online formative assessment in fluid mechanics

    Karen M. Scott, Mary-Helen Ward, Graeme Wood

    This paper looks at the way in which students in core second and third year units of study are using a set of automated practice calculations which have been developed with automatic marking and feedback, and prepared and delivered online. The calculations are in spreadsheet format and are downloaded by students from a WebCT site. Every time students open a file they are presented with a new set of data to practice on. These calculations were introduced into a 2nd year unit in semester 2 2005 and a 3rd year unit in semester 1 2006. The students’ use and perceptions of use in general were correlated with student performance on complex calculations questions in the final examination. The results of this analysis will: a) improve the student learning experience in relation to the way in which the online resource is being used to complement face-to-face teaching; b) develop a model for the provision of online automated practice activities to be made more widely available throughout the School of Civil Engineering and the wider University.

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Showing 79–91 of 121 articles