Monday, April 16, 2012

Operationalising good practice in technology-enhanced learning and teaching

Teaching and LearningTeaching and Learning (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Mike Keppell was facilitating this workshop at DEANZ 2012, which was based around a good practice report funded by the Australian government. The report, while not having many surprising outcomes, is supported by evidence. Mike started by asking everyone to introduce themselves, and one goal we had from the session. It was interesting the variety of people who were attending this session, ranging from the CEO of a private ITO, to practitioners working directly with students...although there was a large number of tertiary practitioners.

Mike advised that by the end of the session to give us all a toolkit to take out to use in our own practice, and that can be used in different ways.
  • How do we recognise good practice in ICT enhanced learning and teaching (ICTELT)?
  • How do we communicate / disseminate good practice in ICTELT?
  • How do we integrate good practice into learning and teaching?
The report was funded by ALTC, who commissions a wide range of reports (264 in 2010). The report looked at 25 complete projects (including 3 fellowships), and 8 ongoing project (including 1 fellowship).

Laurillard, Oliver, Wasson & Hoppe (2009) suggest that the "role of technology [is] to enable new types of learning experiences and to enrich existing learning scenarios" (p.289). They also suggest that an understanding of the authentic professional contexts that will influence the curriculum, pedagogy and assessment practices that need technology enhancement. There also needs to be a confluence between innovation and teacher values. Teachers needs time to reflect on their beliefs about learning and teaching because TEL requires a more structured and analytical approach to pedagogy. Teachers and practitioner require a sense of ownership, and TEL research must be conducted to reflect the interdependence between the practitioner and the researcher. Education leaders need more support for the radical change of institutional teaching and learning models needed, and teachers need to be more closely engaged in the design of the teaching.

The report conducted a meta-analysis of 33 projects to help develop a matrix. The outcomes indicated that:
  • A focus on learning design allows academics to model and share good practice in learning and teaching
  • Authentic learning provides a means of engaging students through all aspects of curricula, subjects, activities and assessments
  • Successful academic development focuses on engaging academics over sustained periods of time through action learning cycles and the provision of leadership development opportunities
  • Academics require sophisticated online teaching strategies to effectively teach in technology-enhanced higher education environments
  • Academics need a knowledge of multi-literacies to teach effectively in contemporary ICTELT
The full report can be accessed online here:  http://www.slideshare.net/mkeppell/final-report-10-good-practice-report
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