Equipping lecturers for the iRevolution: iPads in action

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James Oldfield presented on a project that both he and Thom Cochrane have been working on at Unitec. James started with a bit of an overview of the background to the project, especially around the question "what is the iRevolution". Thom and James started with a pilot using the iPads with James's students, and learned a lot which they have fed-frward to the subsequent projects.

The projects were underpinned by the affordances of mobile learning, as well as social constructivism and communities of practice. Previously students have struggled with the small screen size with mobile devices (Sharples, Taylor, & Vavoula, 2007), but with the iPad this wasn't an issue. It was important that the staff as well as the students were using the iPads. Like minded peers with a common interest were encouraged to work together (Wenger, 2005), and James took on the role of the Technology Steward (Wenger, 2005).

The Community of Practice (21 staff from two business departments - approximately 50% of the staff overall) were equipped with iPads, and the initial trial was followed by the permanent allocation of the devices for staff. This was an optional project and yet there was still a good turn out to initial sessions during the holiday periods. James developed a Moodle course to assist staff to work with the iPads. The Moodle course offered a place for community, access to a glossary of apps, as well as a one stop shop for trouble shooting. The results was the gradual development of capability, which could be seen by, for example, staff posting to the glossary of apps.

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The overall results illustrated that the staff involved, even though they had started from a relatively uninformed position in relation to familiarity to the technology, they had definitely increased capability. Feedback indicated that the iPad is useful for many tasks, and now prefer to use their iPad to their laptop, which remains in their office.One area was highlighted by the following comment "Infrastructure is the problem. The other thing is the cost side, and you compare with the sort of student5s we have in terms of affordability. Or is ti freely available?". This has yet to be fully addressed at the institution.

The affordances of the device really appealed, and for most the iPad acted as an encouragement to look and consider a range of possible pedagogical changes. The duration of the initiative has also proven important.

The level of engagement has been high, and it is interesting that in this project the team has started with the tool rather than overtly with a focus on the design of the programme of learning, and integration with the alternative approaches into the curricula.

Wins and hurdles - the ups and downs of providing professional development in eLearning

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Jacqui Kelly, Judy Schrape, & Kuki Singh highlighted a few of the most effective things that they do as part of PD at Curtin. The main PD is around a weekly programme over 8 weeks, and on top of this there is a module on eLearning, which are further complemented by a range of online resources. Regular eNewsletters are sent once a month to advertise the PD and what it offers.

The PD covers How to use the various tools. The satisfaction rates are quite high. The workshop feedback included comments around "What did you like best about our PD?" Jacqui showed a couple of videos where staff talked about the sessions. The first one was around having a nice safe closed space to experiment, and the second was that she liked the hands on aspect of the sessions where you work through a handout, and the two trainers in the room meant you could get help at any time. Also the follow up was important and knowing who to contact.

Attendance rates have been quite high over the last 3 years. The interesting thing is that more and more professional and development staff have been attending the training rather than only academics. Quite a few staff come to more than one session.

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Hurdles: key thing they need to work out is how to contact more staff - emails often end up under 'delete'. The mixed groups have their own challenges, and staff are no remunderated for attending the eLearning training. A lot of staff book on to sessions, but only about 3/4 of staff who sign up actually attend. There was also a fear of using the technology, and this can create ongoing issues espscially if the technology then doesn't work, or what seemed simple in the workshop appears difficult afterwards. Time again was a big issue.

The workshops were activity driven, consistend, appropriately scheduled, and reflected the teaching styles of the various facilitators. Feedback has been pretty positive, and also included some helpful suggestions for improvement" "Perhaps you could do a needs assessment of participants before we get there to pitch it at the right level".

Elluminate is used for staff who are not based on the main campus, and they have found that participating in webinar sessions in this way gives them a lot of ideas around how to use the environment with students.

The conclusion is that the programme has been successful because it is constantly adapting.

The interesting thing here is the focus on the practical skills - I wonder how the skills were then interconnected with pedagogically sound design. Liked the notion of the immersion envrionment in the Elluminate experience.

Understanding the reasons academics use - and don't use - endorsed learning technologies

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Gregory Kennedy, Deb Jones, Dianne Chambers, and Jon Peacock started their presentation with a wee cartoon that pictured a person in front of a computer that read "either there is an error, or you are too dumb to use this computer". This introduced the research project that the team has undertaken around the question "What are the drivers of technonolgy use in teaching and learning at the University of Melbourne?". Shannon and Doube (2003, 2004) identified a list of barriers impacting the uptake of technology, and this has been extended by Birch and Burnett (2009) - reasons are categorised as institutional, individual, and pedagogical.

Gregory introduced some of the internal University tools available (Blackboard, Moodle, Turnitin, Echo etc), but these enterprise systems were then being extended by 'unsanctioned' technologies freely available on the Web. The team undertook a survey with staff, and the quantitative data was reported on. The survey was completed by 268 faculty members, and the demographics were unsurpising. Some of the trends in what they found included a high percentage of faculty used the institution LMS tools, followed by about 50% plus using things such as Turnitin, and then 60% and up of staff who have never used the institution tools...some of which they didn't actually know about. The non-University-based technologies included onlined video (48.4% using them). Interesting that one of the areas where they could make the comparison was the blog and wiki tools. In an area where people are not using many of the more advanced social media tools, there is a rough equivalence between institutional and non-institutional tools.

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There are a number of reasons for people using technology, especially value for students. Using a factor analysis the data was analysed and the reasons for using the technology are innovation and learning, and the sencond factor was the convenience. For not using, the reasons included support and skills, and relevance and value where there were concers about how relevant it would be for both staff and students. The four scales were put through a cluster analysis which pulled together all areas that were 'alike'. There were four clear set of staff that emerged - Regular citizens (n=41)not strong dirvers for technology); Convenience driven (n=37) most value in the ability of technology to make things more convenient; Perfect citizens (n=72) not that driven by lack of relevance, motiavated to use technology based on value, relevance etc; Dedicated warriors (n=95) similar to perfect citizens are in it for the right reasons but still have another of concerns; Disgruntled pragmatists 9n=17) dominated by the reasons not to use technology.

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"Although technology is now commun place in most higher education institutions - most institutions have invested in a...VLE and employ staff dedicated to support eLearning - there is little evidence of significant impact on teaching practice" (Blin & Munrol, 2008).

Time is a huge issues for staff. Strategies need to be developed to encourage more faculty to invest time and effort, and one of the key factors identified are professional development.

Some interesting findings - it would be interesting to hear how the findings from the data have been used. At the moment they have been sent through to the academic board at the University, and this will then go foward into practical strategies to tailor PD programmes in response to that.

Building a scaffold for future learning: Whilst the demands increase and the directions change

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Gilly Salmon was the first keynote of ASCILITE 2011, and her presentation was accompanied by a visual representation of the presentation as it was underway. She started by talking about her professional 'journey' around the topic of forge (to form or make through concentrated effort...). Gilly used to work for the Open University in the UK and even though the OU was ostensibly 'distance learning' there was quite a few face-to-face tutorials. This became a problem once they opened up programmes in Europe where students were geographically disparate and there was no way that they could drive into, say, Paris on a weekly basis for tutorials. This sparked some creative thinking around hwo to connect and communicate (prior to, for example, graphic user interfaces).

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Some of the things that Gilly learned on the way 1) if you want the future of learning to work you have to design it; 2) the actual role of facilitation is different to the design process; 3) if you want to know if it's working - ask your students!!

Between 1992 and 1995 Gilly developed a five stage model for productive learning forms around 1) access and motivation, 2 culture building, 3 co-operation, 4 collaboration, 5) development. Once students have forged relationships they are more likely to help each other, and there needs to be motivation to come back again and again...this in particular is to see of there is a message in response to something they have posted. This means someone needs to have posted a response, and the facilitator will need to build this culture. Little easy things should build toward a final larger task. The steps break into roles welcome, host, lead, facilitate and guide. The welcome should be around welcoming a person, and congratulated for coming back, leading is showing how being part of the environment and contributing to it will be of value to them.

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Gilly broke down the eModerating roles as follows. She advised that you need to recruit people who are more comfortable as guides on the side, and who do not see elearning as a substitute for something better. She emphasised that it is important to train everyone beforehand before letting them loose in the online environment. It's also good if they have had experience of being an eLearning, and who have a 'reflective edge'. The training aspect needs to have aspects of 'weaving and summarising', as well as diversity - although this tends to come with experience rather than being something that you can train people to 'do'.

The five stage model becams a catalyst for many people who started using it to design learning experiences for students. This in turn impacted Gilly who herself started to design programmes in quite a different way.

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You can't design programmes on your own any more. This is something that Gilly has called Designing together: Carpe Diem which is a model for learing design that uses the five stage model as a foundation, and has since been developed further. The idea was that the session was run over a day, but it actually needs a couple of days. The first day focuses on the design, and the second on the build. Story boarding is a fundamental aspect of the process.

Gilly concluded that your own 'forge' needs to be grounded and practical, driven by needs and a purpose, addresses prior design and deliverly, and is adaptable and flexible.

While there was nothing new in the presentation, it was a superb overview of the development of eLearning and associated design and facilitation considerations...and the importance aspects of how to make 'virtual' learning effective.

Related articles

• Preparing for screencasting via storyboards (jasonrenshaw.typepad.com)
• Storyboarding, prototypes and e-learning design (sparkyourinterest.wordpress.com)

Harnessing the Smartphone Revolution

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Braden Turner (the innovations manager at Vodafone NZ) was a keynote speaker at the ICELF conference, and he spoke about smart devices, and harnessing the 'revolution'. He fronted up by saying that he is not an mLearning expert, and he will be speaking about network capability, and how this will impact education in NZ.

Smartphones have changed significantly in the past couple of years, and Braden reinforced this point by showing a short video. Much of the video focussed on the technology making decisions for you to "make life easier". It felt as though Braden was searching for links between his corporate presenation and how it may relate to education. Wonder if a little more homework might have helped :-) One suggested example was a student reading a text on their smart device, hopping into their car to get to lectures, and the device automatically switching to an MP3 to continue working with the text.

Apparently 33% of people would rather lose their wallet than their phone - you can always borrow cash, but you can't borrow someone else's phone for the day. Ninety one percent of phone owners will keep their phone within 5 meters of themselves 24/7.

Augmented reality is the concept of using your camera on your mobile device to interface with realtiy. For example, you might be reading a text about welding, and the phone will bring up a video about how to weld, and therefore enhancing the learning experience. Hmmm - someone just tweeted about "where is the human in all of this?" - tend to agree.

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We were treated to an overview of the future of  the Vodafone network (Long Term Evolution)...while it is interesting to be reassured that, in theory, the network will cope with heaps of students using their smartphone and from any location (e.g. rural locations)....hmmm - a Tui advert in the making ;-)

eLearning and teacher education: Crossing digital divides

Image by Wayan Vota via Noeline Wright started the presentation with a reference to Prensky's notion of Digital natives and the fact that it was always supposed to be a metaphor, and has since be used in ways that he never initially meant. The notions of digital natives do not replace. for example intuition, good judgement, problem solving, and ability to discern patterns. Also, "in and unimaginable complex future, the digitally unenhanced person, however wise, will not be able to access the tools of wisdom that will be available to even the least wise digitally enhanced human" (Prensky). It suggests that delayed use of these types of tools will be impoverished use. Media should not be regarded merely as teaching aids or tools for learning. Education about the media should be seen seen an indispensable pre-requisite for education with or though media (Buckingham and Burn, 2007).

Critical thinking and metacognitive skills need to be present alongside engagement, intention, deliberation, self-monitoring, and self-regulation (MacDonald et al, 2011). The ability to engage often comes after the means to engage have happened. Engagement does not happen before the ability that they can work on the learning...that it is accessible. while we build self-esteem in students, and that sense of belonging, rather than working with the texts, it will only ever be social. The learners also need to have the confidence to have different points of view, to be able to agree and disagree with each other. "Extended cognition is a core cognitive process, not an add-on extra [because] the brain develops in a way that complements the external structures in ways that people who have not experience these types of interactions would be unable to do. There is a strong link between high achievement and metacognition, which "highlights the importance of learning the self-monitoring and self-regulating behaviours that will ensure task-specific meaning-making" (MacDonald et al, 2011).

The teacher, therefore, guides students through an analysis of the text type, working out what is conveyed, what can be deduced about the writer and/or the origin of the text, how the student located and collected information, and what produce they would create from it.

"Multimodal texts are fast becoming the dominant mode of communication...stdent need to be a discerning user of them" (MacDonald et al, 2011). If the key focus of education is to reduce the distance between a learner and a text, and for the learner to then make that their own - then the role of the teacher is to facilitate the process, and explicit teaching around critical thinking and inference.

Noeline gave some illustrations from initial teacher education, and when she shows them a Web page around a 'Guinea worm' there is often no curiosity or motivation to find out more...do they even exist? What are they? Why might they need to be eradicated? In other words there is little motivation to investigate what the text is.
Noelene closed by saying that what she believes is that there needs to be deliberate acts to teach metacognition, and critical thinking about all types of texts.

Dialogic inquiry online

Image by Candace Nast via FlickrIt was really interesting that Jennie Swann started by indicating the synergies and overlaps between the previous 2 sessions and hers, although she is developing communities of inquiry rather than a CoP as CoPs take time to develop, and the course she works on is only 12 weeks in duration.

Jennie started with a 'conceptual artefact' "students never claimed to be digital natives and we spould stop beating them up for not being epxert online learners. Teach them" @easgill. This was the top tweet from the first day at the conference, and Jennie totally agreed with the thrust of the tweet, and used it as a segue into discussing experiences in MOOCs, in particularly the age of participants. The ones who participated effectively were the ones who have the skills. So there is a gap between Prensky's original assertion that the digital native's students' thinking patterns have changed, and the need to work with things that are familiar.

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Learners in tertiary, also, are diverse. Research shows that students are skilled at using LMSs, Google, Wikipedia, emails, and mobile phones. Thye have littel familiarity with collaborative knowledge creation tools, virtual worlds, personal web publishing, and other emergent socail technologies. The students do not appear to have radically differnnt patterns of knowledge creation and sharing (Margaryan, Littlejohn, and Voijt).

It has been asserted that learners can, through social software can easily connetct and share with each other leading to conversations. But what do these conversations look like? And what do you do if they don't? Also, (and oft quited reason for not encoouraging coversations)how does the content get coverered?

Ways of knowing underping forms of intellectual and ethcial development in the college environment. Students often, for example, believe that knowledge is certain and it is the role of the teacher to cram this knowledge into our heads and we'll regurgitate this in our exams. Lecturers often feel the same - and the focus is on lower order thinkoing skills....Jennie wondered if that was because there is no compulsory teacher training in tertiary. Once knowledge is not seen as certain, then people can have different points of view on things...it's OK to disagree and discuss.

Contextual knowledge judged on the basis of evidence in context which promostes the applicaiton of knowledge in context and promotes ecaluative discussion of perspectice. In this discourse, teachers and students often critique each other.Lecturers can also use a range of open questions to help initiate discussions. The Web site (Networked Dialogue)  is openly available.

Jennie showed a site that scaffolds students through the process and structure of conversations - it takes them step-by-step., as well as indicating possible issues that might be faced.