Wednesday, September 30, 2015

National Tertiary Learning and Teaching conference - 2015 day 1afternoon

NTLT day one, afternoon (now updated with links)

After lunch, continue with the elearning track. First up, Debbie Hallam from BoPP percent n 'harnessing technology to map out a future: providing industry capability across NZ'. Shared journey from being in the construction industry to education. Skill shortage in surveying in NZ. Institute of Surveyors worked with BoPP to find solution to offer diploma qualification across NZ. Other associated ancillary areas also developed including quantity surveying and construction management. Abode Connect used a a tool to connect with learners with many completing the programme part time and working full time. Flexible enrolments possible. Staff development accelerated by colleague with high digital literacy contribution for a year. Student feedback listened to and course development increased considerably. Two dedicated suites now available for blended learning to occur. Now have 70% of cohort as online students scattered throughout NZ. 

Second up, 'critical challenges for managing summative assessment of student learning in online programmes' with Lynette Steele from BoPP. Two business programmes offered only through BoPP, diploma in conveyancing and graduate certificate in NZ immigration advice (offered internationally). Summarised the challenges related to final exams including those imposed by licensing authorities. Alternatives include open exam on students own computer at specific time for a set amount of time. Use software or supervisor to check ID and monitor student during exam, apply exam design techniques and submit exam immediately to institution for marking.  

Then, Kung Keat Teoh from Flinders university and Pek Fong Ng from University of South Australia with 'academics and next generation elearning systems: of roles and pedagogy '. Provided some ideas on the advancement of technologies and relevance to education. BYOD allows feedback in real time to lecturer while lectures continue. Mobile learning affordances for multi media resources etc. social networks can be leveraged. Moocs overview. Plusses and minuses discussed for each. Need for educators to keep abreast of potential future education technologies and adopt effectively. Future techs include image retrieval technology (match images to real world application); artificial intelligence to read images - see TED talk; smart lab systems to incorporate haptic simulations; learning agents or virtual personal tutors; adaptive learning (e.g. Knewton or AdeLE); emotion based learning; virtual reality environments. Discussion on role of teachers and need to keep up to date and strategies to achieve. 

Fourth, presentation of the afternoon with Lynette Winter and Nikki Hannan from CPIT on 'a model for blending a highly interactive face to face course'. Rationale and learning from providing teacher qualification - certificate and diploma - to blended. Programme offered to 7 polytechnics. Important objective was also to model flexible learning to tutors and have tutors experience online learning before they had to teach online. Re design completed in conjunction with other polytechnics. Used a workplace training context and OTARA as the learning design frame. Use f2f to warm up to online;  online activities encourage tutors to apply and report back on; integrate into the activities into assessments. 

Move across to an group assessment stream after afternoon tea. Presenting a timefirst are Nick Hearns and Jay Hays form Unitec on 'student teams: promises, problems nod paradoxes'. Presented, within business context, the reasons for learners to work in teams with assumption that team skills can be learnt and transferred. Challenges to placing students into teams include team outcomes are often only equal to one individual best efforts; student frustration with repeated use of teams and not actually learning team skills! Paradoxes are ineffective team assessments leads to disengagement. Therefore, need to prepare students to work In teams but student teams have inherent difficulties. These are short time span of teams duration, generic and low level expertise and undifferentiated experience. See Salas, 2015 for latest on on team building and types of team. Recommended a team learning pyramid to model elements of dialogue (elementary, improving, proficient, highly advanced and highly sophisticated), reflection and mindfulness. Assign roles like mover, opposer, bystander and follower as anchors to improve elements. 

Next up, Michelle Wright and Jane Dillon from Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology on 'facilitating group work online'. Covered facilitation skills for tutors requires social, instructional and social presence. Social presence requires building a community of inquiry with a social learning culture. Instructional presence require detailed instructions and coaxing through reminder. Cognitive presence makes us a conscious attempt to deepen student understanding and learning. Based on Salmon's 5 stage model. Build a communication plan for the course to ensure all bases covered and to organise busy course. Applied management programme used to provide an e ample of how to apply the facilitation skills. Self and peer evaluation rubric used to mark group work. Team presents findings but also assessed on individual reports and reflections. 

Last session for the day is on the 'collaboration conundrum: "but it's my mark l care about!' With Anne Bradley at BOPP. Challenges of inquiry based learning with student teams working towards attaining employment capability, research capability and management knowledge. How to counter a individualistic culture to allow for valuing of collaboration and collective knowledge. Fostering a community of learning is a key. Ran through several activities to anchor concepts presented. 

 Busy day, with several interesting sessions and good to catch up with other educational developers and trades tutors. Off to taste and nibbles session for the early evening. 

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