Ascilite 2010 Report:

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

Academic Involvement with the LMS: an exploratory study

The following is a paper I have written in conjunction with Colin and David as part of the Indicators Project.

Abstract:
There is growing interest in the use of academic analytics however most of the reported work is being done at the level of institutions, and groupings of courses within those institutions. This study is an exploratory case study aimed at analyzing an academics’ involvement with the Learning Management System, the student’s involvement with the LMS, and the links between the LMS, the academic, and the students.

To read more. (Opens as a pdf)

The presentation for ascilite 2010:

Filed under: ascilite, Indicators Project

One ascilite 2009 paper, one to go

Col and I have just put the finishing touches to a paper on research we did into a safe/fail experiment utilising RSS, and web 2.0 technology.  While there are some shortcomings, the aim of the original site was to provide a space for student, staff and industry peers to come together and have career information, current practice, news feeds, stories, and BProfComm news fed out to interested parties.  The original intention was to facilitate a wholeness of communication practice that was not built into BlackBoard 6.3, and therefore we felt that we should build  a system that would see RSS used as the channel for greater engagement.

One of the first things we realised was that it did not work.  The basic premise that we understood at that time was that students were tech savvy, and therefore, they would use RSS feeds and integrate them into their life.  Alas, such is not the case.  “Build it and they will come”, or “Gen Y is tech savvy’ is not quite true.  One or two students used it, but the majority did not as they saw no use for such technology, as they use technology for play.  As one student said to me, “I use a mobile phone, an IPod, and Facebook; other things [by this I think she meant technology] do not interest me.”

The idea is still good though, and I am exploring ways that staff and industry peers can use this site to facilitate some form of engagement with each other.  Perhaps there is some way to utilise the feeds in Facebook?  Will have to explore this option.

Filed under: ascilite, ascilite