This year’s ascilite conference was held in Sydney, at the Novatel Brighton Beach where two papers were presented, one by Colin, and one by myself, and I am sorry that David was not there, but I think finishing his PhD is enough for anyone.
Beer, C. Clark, K., & Jones, D. (2010). Indicators of engagement. In C.H. Steel, M.J. Keppell, P. Gerbic & S. Housego (Eds.), Curriculum, technology & transformation for an unknown future. Proceedings ascilite Sydney 2010 (pp.75-86). http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/sydney10/Ascilite conference proceedings 2010/Beer-full.pdf
Clark, K., Beer, C. & Jones, D. (2010). Academic involvement with the LMS: An exploratory study. In C.H. Steel, M.J. Keppell, P. Gerbic & S. Housego (Eds.), Curriculum, technology & transformation for an unknown future. Proceedings ascilite Sydney 2010 (pp.487-496). http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/sydney10/Ascilite conference proceedings 2010/Kenclark-full.pdf
Monday 6th December 2010.
The conference was opened with a keynote from Professor Jan Herrington (UTS) on Authentic Learning and emerging technologies, followed by a plenary session on Blackboard.
After the plenary session I listened to some fascinating papers on LMS system analysis and Blended Learning environments. The afternoon session was spent finalizing the first of the papers to be delivered on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Tuesday 7th December 2009.
The morning keynote was by Dr Lev Gonick who spoke of a very high speed interconnectedness in downtown Cleveland, and the difficulties that surround that project, but he also spoke of the possibilities of these developments.
This followed by the invited speaker, Prof Tom Reeves, who spoke on the challenges of online education, and blended learning environments.
Our first paper, presented by Col, was after the lunch session and was on indicators of engagement, which was well received, and originated some useful discussion.
The rest of the day was spent going to other presentations, and we broke early so that we could get ready for the conference dinner.
Wednesday 8th December 2009.
Whilst somewhat dry from the night before, the morning sessions in my breakout group were interesting and the morning was spent getting ready for the second presentation, due after the morning tea break. At this session I spoke on the opportunities for reflective practice that exists in academic analytics.
The conference was interesting, though there is still a lot of work to do with academic analytics, and it was very good to catch up once again with Shane Dawson who has agreed to be a supervisor for my PhD. And as Shane said, I need to read, “what is your research question”, and basically write, even if it is crap. I agree with this, it is the art of writing, nit looking for the ‘gems’ that make a successful writer.
Overall, it was a good conference but I was glad to get home 
cheers
Ken
Filed under: ascilite, Indicators Project, self-reflection
