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2006: ASCILITE 2006 Companion Materials

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 - Posters

  • The Merlin Affair: Addressing students’ needs in learning media law through the use of multimedia environments

    Des Butler

    Traditional teaching and learning in law follows a standard formula of a program of lectures supported by small group tutorials which examine scenario-type problems. It might be queried how well such an educational approach equates with legal practice in the real world and meets students’ real needs. The information required to resolve the problem rarely if ever comes conveniently summarised in a half-page tutorial question but instead has to be actively derived from a variety of sources. The Merlin Affair is a multi-media program that is an integral component of Media Law, a final- year elective in the undergraduate bachelor of laws degree at the QUT Law Faculty. The program comprises a series of modules which address different areas of media law focusing on the central theme of an unfolding news story (the fictional uncovering of a corrupt politician), including confidentiality, privacy, defamation, contempt, and vilification. The modules involve a problem based learning approach which requires students to collect information or resources in a realistic context, distinguish the material from the immaterial, organise and analyse the balance, and communicate a resolution of the problem. In this way The Merlin Affair is designed to address students’ real needs by presenting a learning environment that more closely simulates legal practice.

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  • Understanding the impact of tablet PCs on student learning and academic teaching

    Steve Clark, Lucy Taylor, Joanne Pickering, Andrew Wait

    During semester 2, 2005 and semester 1, 2006 three academics in the Faculty of Economics and Business at the University of Sydney were invited to trial the use of Tablet PCs to deliver their presentations in lectures. This paper presents a study of teaching with Tablet PCs, combining real-time handwritten annotation with prepared material on digital slides, and evaluates the likelihood of its adoption as a teaching tool among academics. We gathered feedback from students by using a survey and provided a discussion board where students could post comments. We conducted interviews with academics using questions based on Rogers (2003) study into the impact of innovation on teaching. The results of this study will be used to inform the future direction of Tablet PCs in the Faculty and contribute knowledge to the broader learning community on this teaching tool.

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  • New activity centred technology challenges students of midwifery: An evaluation

    Ingrid D’Souza, Maria Miller, Jeremy Gauder, Ian Kershaw

    The Fetal On line Electronic Teaching & Learning (F.O.E.T.A.L) is a learning module designed to facilitate learning of Electronic Fetal Monitoring (EFM). The target audience incorporates students of midwifery at ACU National (Vic). Traditionally, the theoretical content was delivered face-to-face and the concepts were difficult to master in the time allocated. Therefore the decision was made to use WebCT as the learning platform and by doing so allowed the students to understand the concepts at a self-directed pace, revisit materials and practice interpretations of fetal heart rate patterns in a non-clinical practice environment. Evaluation of F.O.E.T.A.L was conducted at the end of first semester 2006 utilising a variety of data sources: online student evaluation surveys, comments posted to the discussion area and achievements of related content in learning assessments. The focus of the evaluation was twofold: to assess the acquisition of knowledge and to beta test the F.O.E.TA.L program. One hundred and twelve students undertook the module and 46 completed the survey. The e-learning delivery of EFM content to these students was evaluated as being effective in enhancing knowledge and understanding. In addition, students provided valuable feedback for ongoing development of F.O.E.TA.L. Students found that the content was extensive and that they had to spend a considerable amount of time undertaking the F.O.E.T.A.L module but it was considered as a valuable learning activity. They also commented that timely feedback was required and this could be enhanced.

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  • Developing online postgraduate coursework to promote change in animal industries

    Hannah Forsyth, Chris Moran, Jaime Gongora, Ruth Laxton, Julius van der Werf

    Educational theories are increasingly demonstrating the significance of a participative approach to educational design, development and teaching. This participative approach promotes the design of learning programs that consider learning on a larger scale than the individual – extending to transforming organisations, professions, industries. This poster reports on an action research project attached to a new postgraduate coursework program in Animal Breeding Management. This online program is led by the need for animal industries to change practices in light of new knowledge and technologies in animal genetics and breeding. Relevance to industry is not the only contributing factor in the project - university and government imperatives for efficiencies through collaboration mean that the project is being conducted collaboratively by the University of Sydney and the University of New England and is being managed and developed by a team consisting of academic specialists, an educational designer and a manager. The poster shows how the various stakeholders are committed to a two-way learning process during the program development and outlines the collaborative effort between the two universities. Outcomes to date suggest that, to meet stakeholders’ shared goal of change across animal industries, alignment of industry needs, academic validity, management and educational design is necessary.

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  • “I haven’t studied for twenty years and now I have to do it online”: Online orientation for postgraduate students in veterinary science

    Hannah Forsyth, Meg Vost, Jenny-Ann Toribio, Sarah Graham, Karen Black, Ruth Laxton

    It is not a new thought that good induction and orientation in Higher Education, prepared in a targeted and supported way, enables improved student socialisation and retention (McNickle, 1999; Bozarth, 2004; Salmon, 2000). The challenges of providing this orientation increase in distance study and are particularly acute for students whose earlier experiences of study are pre-web. The online orientation tutorial for postgraduate students in Veterinary Science aims to: Enable students to develop technological and information skills Provide clarity in the processes required for completing formal study by distance Equip students with core study and time management skills Encourage early adoption of reflective practice Prepare students for the challenges of online group work Provide opportunities for social and professional interaction online Reduce the stress of impending study As well as these orientation-focused goals, online orientation has been designed to encourage students to adopt their actions in the online classroom to be the goal of their learning behaviour (cf Young, 2004), rather than considering the online classroom to be a web-based information resource, as previous experience with the web might imply. This prepares students to take an active and collaborative approach to learning.

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  • Benchmarking e-learning: The UK experience

    Eddie Gulc

    The Higher Education Academy (The Academy) is leading a UK-wide higher education e-learning benchmarking exercise and is keen to work with the sector to describe and monitor the achievement of strategic goals in e-learning and support the development of benchmarking processes and tools. 12 institutions were selected to join the Pilot Phase in January 2006 and in October 2006 another 39 institutions joined Phase 1. What is being benchmarked has been informed by the contexts and priorities of the participating institutions. The exercise has not been prescriptive about processes and tools at this stage so during the Pilot Phase the institutions selected five differing approaches to benchmarking. Some Issues in the Pilot Phase: To establish a common understanding, among participating institutions, about what is meant by e-learning, embedding, and benchmarking; Following on from this, if e-learning is embedded is it possible, easy, or desirable to try and isolate the exact contribution the ‘e’ made to the learning? If not, we end up not benchmarking e-learning at all, but something far broader; Deciding on the most meaningful organisational unit for benchmarking: is it at institutional, faculty, school level etc?; The extent to which the Academy should demonstrate leadership with regard to the direction of developing a diverse approach to benchmarking rather than ‘champion’ any single approach; To evaluate whether the ‘constrained diversity’ approach taken proved to be the correct one? The view taken was that a heterogeneous higher education sector requires some degree of heterogeneity of approach; The extent to which institutions have prioritised development over comparison? Further information about the exercise can be found at: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/benchmarking.htm Or from the benchmarking weblog at: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/weblogs/benchmarking/

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  • Reducing staff and student workload: Redevelopment of an online law unit

    Kerryn Jackson, Bill Potter, David Lindsay, Len Webster, Kathy Buxton, Melissa deZwart

    Law of the Internet was the first entirely online postgraduate unit offered by the Faculty of Law at Monash University. It was first offered in 1999 and has been offered at least twice a year since that time. The unit was designed around a website presenting ten modules of content and four discussion forums. Online tasks were submitted via the discussion forum or via email, with student-teacher interaction facilitated via the discussion forums. The constantly changing nature of the unit content, the volume of tasks completed by the students and associated assessment, and the heavy administrative load have created a unit that is very labour intensive for both students and staff. As the Faculty moves to the provision of increasing numbers of online postgraduate units, it was decided to revisit the design of Law of the Internet with a view to reducing the workload commitment of the teacher and support staff. This poster outlines the process of that review, the selection and implementation of alternative technologies, including wikis and an in-house collaborative learning environment, LEX. Preliminary results as to the impact of the redesign on staff and student workloads will be presented.

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  • I want to tell you a story…

    Martin Jenkins, Kenny Lynch

    This poster will report on developmental work on the use of both podcasting and digital storytelling as part of students’ induction to higher education. These techniques are used to both provide information and context for students and as methods to record the student experience. Students in the Department of Natural and Social Sciences are inducted into higher education using field based activities linked to learning development module. During the induction week new students are engaged in two days field work that introduces them to active learning, the dominant pedagogical philosophy of the Department. As part of the students’ reflection and evaluation on these activities, working in small groups, they produce a digital story. Podcasts are then used throughout the learning development module to provide context and additional information leading to students creating their own podcasts. The evaluation has focused on assessing the students’ perceptions of the value of these techniques to their learning experience, using questionnaire and focus groups. Academic staff views on developing these resources and their use have also been sought through questionnaire and interview.

    Read article: I want to tell you a story…

  • Investigating teachers authoring their own learning designs

    Matthew Kearney, Anne Prescott, Kirsty Young

    The ‘project in progress’ is situated in pre-service education and investigates prospective teachers authoring and use of their own online learning designs. Secondary and primary pre-service teachers adopted exemplary, well-researched learning strategies to inform the design of their own specific online learning tasks. (Strategies included analogical reasoning; predict-observe-explain; and ‘learners’ questions’ approach.) The teachers then used their online tasks in the context of their teaching practicum. The web-based Learning Activity Management System (LAMS) acted as a ‘test-bed’ and support for their designs and implementation. This poster will report on preliminary findings from the study, focusing on key issues relating to the student teachers’ professional learning. Research questions addressed in this poster are: How does this authoring and implementation process help student teachers to ‘build bridges’ between theory and practice in their teaching degree? To what extent do they develop their knowledge of (online and face to face) teaching and learning? To what extent is their understanding of specific learning strategies enhanced?

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  • Learning to teach online online: Training remote facilitators in postgraduate veterinary science programs

    Ruth Laxton, Hannah Forsyth, Jenny-Ann Toribio

    The Veterinary Public Health Management Program at the University of Sydney is an online postgraduate program, a small component of which is taught by staff, while the majority is taught by a range of industry experts who are located around Australia and internationally. Our challenge was how best to train and induct these external facilitators in teaching online in the program – all within a limited budget and time constraints. Our solution is an online tutorial which gives the facilitators basic skills in online facilitation and an orientation to the program. The online teaching tutorial focuses on: Developing core skills in using the learning software Characteristics of effective online learning activities Conducting valid and authentic assessment in an online environment Supporting and assessing collaborative learning approaches Given our facilitators are practicing and busy experts with altruistic motivations for teaching, it was necessary to design the teaching tutorial with the flexibility to work through topics of interest at times that are convenient with information and activities chunked and pitched at different levels for facilitators with previous teaching experience and those without. Feedback and teacher performance has demonstrated the online teaching tutorial to be an effective method of training remote facilitators.

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  • The collaborative work between learning technologists and academics in implementing online learning

    Yik Sheng Lee, Siaw Way Poh

    A recent study on e-leaning readiness of at least 30 institutions of higher learning in Malaysia has provided a good overview of the status of online learning adoption in the country. It was noted in summary of the report that the enablers and receivers recorded the lowest level of readiness amongst the four groups (the other two being policy makers and providers) of personnel surveyed. It is vital to take a closer look at the factors and processes that affect the enablers and receivers in adopting online learning. This will inform policy makers on designing plans to promote a higher level of readiness. This concise paper is a preliminary report of an on-going action research. The focus of this research is the working practices of enablers such as learning technologist and academics. The research documents the actions of the learning technologist while working with academics to implement online learning. It takes a detail look at the factors that promote, inhibit and sustain a successful collaboration. It also studies the roles played by both parties and the possibilities of replicating the same practices campus wide. This paper will present the background, the research questions, the methods used and the initial findings of this study.

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  • Semi-automated assessment and workload expectation mapping

    Melinda Lewis, Mary Jane Mahony, Ann Poulos

    The Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Sydney has conducted a mapping project to develop a deeper understanding of assessment factors which potentially impact on students’ perception of workload. Electronic capture of annual faculty Assessment Program Meeting (APM) data, as well as lecturer’s perceptions on preparation time, generated semi-automated assessment and workload expectation maps. Data were imported into Excel spreadsheets. The initial data tables provided a preliminary picture of assessment and workload expectations. Charts of predicted student workload directly related to assessment tasks were produced. The assessment profile across a unit of study, a semester, a year and a program made visible: exam clusters several due dates for assignments coinciding where preparation time identified by lecturers was short and intense, or on-going and overlapping Embracing informatics approaches to semi-automate assessment mapping can aid individual unit of study coordinators’ efforts to manage the whole of student experience with regard to assessment times and workload. Profile construction aids identification of over redundancy of assessment method, gaps in student development opportunities, and workload periods which may lead students to surface rather than deep learning strategies.

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  • Do we know what skills our students think are being tested in exams?

    Jennifer Lingard, Laura Minasian-Batmanian, Ian Cathers, Mary-Jane Mahony, Gilbert Vella

    In a substantial assessment policy change, the University of Sydney is moving to grade allocation based on published standards, rather than cohort distribution. Examiners often allocate higher grades to students who exhibit higher level skills, as based on a taxonomy such as Bloom’s (Krathwohl, 2002) or SOLO (Boulton-Lewis, 1998). However, many students do not understand exactly what skills are required in terms of gaining these higher grades. Questions thus arise as to whether or not students have the same perception of the grading system as those who set the assessment tasks and also if students with more accurately aligned perceptions perform at the higher levels. As students’ learning behaviour is influenced by their perception of what skills are required to obtain higher marks (Trigwell & Prosser, 1991; Prosser, Trigwell, Hazel & Waterhouse, 2000), it is crucial to know what our students think is being tested. This research aimed to find out if students performed better when their perception of the skills being tested in a particular exam question was well aligned with staff judgments. First year Physiotherapy students (160) undertook an optional online trial exam in their first semester biochemistry unit. This exam consisted of thirty multiple choice questions that were prepared and graded for skill requirement by three content and educational experts. Students indicated their perception of the skill level being tested by each question. Multiple attempts were permitted. Detailed feedback on content and skill testing was also provided online. About 80% of students completed the assessment, and many have attempted it again. Preliminary data analysis indicates that students view the skills being tested in a much narrower band than do staff i.e. questions testing lower level skills are seen as being more difficult, and vice versa. It is intended to correlate student perceptions with several factors, including their prior level of topic knowledge and final exam performance.

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