Archive for the ‘professional development’ Category

« Older Entries

Introducing the Desire2Learn Tool Guide for Teachers

Saturday, September 22nd, 2012

We’ve now implemented Desire2Learn (D2L) as our LMS at Deakin University, and have been delivering all our units (courses) in the system since Trimester 3, 2011. There was an investment in developing a professional development program for academic staff to assist in the transition to the new system that had a focus on learning about D2L and the migration of course material. Attention was also paid to learning design and how the D2L tool set and functions might be used to best support the curriculum.  I also thought that a Desire2Learn Tool Guide for Teachers (like the Moodle Tool Guide developed by Joyce Seitzinger in 2010) would be useful in helping academic staff decide which tool to use for a particular learning activity and to consider what level of thinking is used (for a tool & activity) according to the revised Bloom’s taxonomy. 

I started work on this guide in 2011, and when Joyce stared working at Deakin Uni during the year, I was happy to work together with her to finish this version. We’ve chosen the most used D2L tools and mapped them in a matrix to give advice about how useful they are for specific learning activities and using colours indicated how well they fit to that task. We presented the new Desire2Learn Tool Guide for Teachers at the recent inaugural Desire2Learn Asia-Pac Teaching and Learning conference and hope that people find it useful. You can download an A3 Poster version (pdf) below. 

D2L ToolGuideforTeachers
Desire2Learn Tool Guide for Teachers Sep2012

We have also created a Deakin version of the Desire2Learn Tool Guide that contains references to the Deakin Graduate Learning Outcomes and 12 Aspects of Cloud Learning that we see as important in supporting 21st Century Learning and developing work-ready graduates. We have released under a creative commons license that is non-commercial, share alike with attribution. It is intended that this might become part of the suite of professional development tools available to support online learning and teaching using Desire2Learn. Looking forward to your feedback. 

PS. Joyce’s original guide has been translated into over a dozen languages and has also been adapted for a different LMS – see the BlackBoard Tool Guide for Tutors & the BlackBoard 9.1 Tool Guide. 

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in learning, professional development, software, teaching, work | No Comments »

there’s one constant we can be sure of – change

Saturday, April 21st, 2012

It’s been too long since my last post and a lot has happened in my professional life. Things are the same, but they’ve changed – here’s a quick update.

Since coming back from FUSION 2011 mid 2011, I worked on a small research project that examined the planning for the integration of ePortfolios into degree program. I believe this is a worthwhile way to implement ePortfolios by having them embedded in a purposeful and meaningful way with authentic assessment activities. The resulting research report was submitted as the final piece of assessment for the Graduate Certificate of Higher Education (happy to say that I’ve now graduated).

Then there was a flurry of conferences from October to December that provided me with opportunities to share, learn, reconnect and be inspired. I was able to present the preliminary findings of the ePortfolio research project at the ePortfolio Australia Conference (#EAC11) in Perth last October.  I also came away from the conference understanding that sufficient planning & preparation are required to introduce ePortfolios successfully, that student respond well to engaging ePortfolio tasks, and that ePortfolios provide a useful platform for student reflections on learning. While in Perth I was also able to attend the Apple Paperless Padagogy Workshop (great to see the development of tools to create epubs on the iPad platform) and the ATN Assessment Conference (#ATN11). I came away from this conference thinking more about how we can design assessment to be more meaningful in the 21st Century, how we provide authentic assessment of graduate attributes, skills and capabilities attainment, and how we might provide alternative modes of feedback such as audio.

I was on the organising committee of the Teaching and Learning with Vision Conference (#TLV11) in early November and we had a great lineup of speakers and a great vibe over the two days. We were challenged to think about using games for learning, creating innovative learning spaces, how a new generation of learners like to learn, the power of networks for learning, learnt more about QR codes, using point of view (POV) glasses to record skill development, and we shared our favourite social media & networking tools. Make sure you come along to TLV12 in November this year.

TLV keynote
Photo By miz minh TLV11

In mid November I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the Informa Technology for Learning and Teaching Forum and caught up with friends Steve Wheeler, Tom Cochrane and Dave Cummings (amongst others). Then at the end of November there was the ConVerge conference (#ConVerge11) and I enjoyed catching up with Howard Errey, Greg Young, Joyce Seitzinger and Nancy White. Came away with a better understanding of; how MOOCs work, ways mobile devices and video conferencing can be used for engaged learning, how to create epubs, the use Diigo & Evernote for social bookmarking, and the power of connecting groups and networks. 

Also late in the year I applied for a job in the School of Medicine at Deakin, and was very happy to be offered the position of Senior Lecturer, Medical Education (eLearning). This meant that I had to say goodbye to my team and colleagues in the Faculty of Business and Law and finished up on the last working day of the year. My new role is to support the use of technology in learning and teaching so has a similar focus as my previous position, but I’m also keen to develop the research component of my work to measure and evaluate the effectiveness of what we do. 

In early December I was able to attend ASCILITE (#ascilite11) in Hobart and and caught up with friends, made some new connections, and got to know some of my new colleagues from the Faculty of Health. I appreciated hearing about projects involved with; learning design and the use of technology in teaching, student response systems, rubric creation and use, curation and social media, and the potential for learning analytics. 

Ascilite11
ascilite 2011 opening keynote

I started in the School of Medicine mid January and have been busy getting to know staff and students as well as learning how the medical program is delivered. The LMS (Desire2Learn) is used extensively to support the delivery of the program and I see lots of opportunities to augment that system with the use mobile devices, ePortfolios, and video and multi-media. I hope to get a few projects going and looking at how we can improve the outcomes of learning & teaching program for both students and staff. 

So, while my work has been constant over the past nine months, there has been some change in the context of what I’m doing. I was very fortunate and appreciated the opportunities of professional development through conference attendance late last year and look forward to making a contribution in my new workplace. 

Tags:, ,
Posted in conferences, professional development, work | No Comments »

how do we zoom out enough to see the big picture?

Saturday, August 21st, 2010

This week’s been an interesting one in which I’ve been challenged to think more deeply about what might be possible with regard to improving curriculum design during the implementation of an LMS. I believe there is an opportunity to have academics think about their teaching (how they might achieve better learning outcomes & improve student engagement) during the time of transition and preparing/revising their materials in the migration process between two systems. In response to a tweet I posted regarding the possibilities of change afforded by new tools in our new LMS, Dean Groom tweeted to remind me that the tools won’t change a teachers perspective. I appreciate this, but I don’t want to explore what opportunities there might be to make incremental change (if only small) in the way academics teach.

At one level the implementation of a new LMS is fraught with risks – it’s a process that needs to be planned and managed so that there is a smooth transition and teachers and students can get on with their teaching and learning. So, should we be happy to accept this model of ‘let’s just get the course material migrated, the staff and students trained, and it’ll be business as normal’? I’d like to think not, but there a number of institutional pressures to have things working properly – and we’ve become risk adverse as we don’t want to distress our clients (students) and staff with a poorly implemented system. So, I understand we may want to work on an implementation process that provides a robust and working system and then focus on what we can do improve learning and teaching.

On an another level there is an opportunity to work with, and encourage staff to re-think their curriculum in light of the affordances of the new tools available in the new LMS. I see a challenge in helping academics come to understand the potential of different ways of designing learning activities & experiences to achieve outcomes using the functionality of the LMS. Maybe there’s a need to be subversive in all this – change won’t happen en mass – it requires a slowly slowly approach understanding that academics are time poor and looking for efficiencies. There also needs to be an understanding that this will involve some cultural change if new modes and models of teaching and learning are used. The level of resourcing required to develop a framework (and hopefully policy) as well as materials for professional development to support systemic change, will need addressing. It is only by stepping back, and zooming out to see the bigger picture, that we might be able to better understand the context and demands of university education. This includes; teaching, research, service, having work ready and beginning professionals as graduates, and as well as other things, achieving government and institution priorities. I hope that there is some institutional recognition of this and that appropriate resource might be directed to supporting not just an implementation but ongoing curriculum renewal.

So, my mission (that I wish to accept), is to support the introduction of a range of new tools available via the LMS that are intrinsic to holistic learning processes. This will lead to the development of better learning experiences while encouraging teachers to think about how they could adjust/ their curriculum design to develop higher order thinking and engage students more fully.

Posted in learning, professional development, teaching | No Comments »

what kind of story are you telling when presenting at conferences?

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

Some of my thinking since the ascilite 09 conference that I recently attended in Auckland, has centred around the style of presentations I listened to. I was able to learn a lot about a range of topics (as reflected on in previous posts), but I feel that something was lacking during the presentation sessions. I’ve come away from the three days of short talks wondering why I didn’t feel more engaged with some of the talks I attended.

I believe the way I’m feeling has something to do with the ‘stories’ that people told. Too often we were presented with the outline of the paper as it was written for the conference, and people often read out their dot points from their slides. I would rather hear the story of the journey, the experience, how people felt while working their project, reflections from participants, about the new understanding they developed, and what changed about their thinking. An interesting story will always lead me to the paper and further investigation.

Narrative is core to our culture and we only need to look at the popularity of books & films to see how much we like a good yarn. While we in developed Western cultures have lost a lot of the oral tradition, it is still a common means of passing on knowledge and understanding. Maybe we would do well to focus a little more on developing stories through which to ‘deliver’ content, ideas, and findings in our educational institutions.

I believe a ‘presentation story’ is (should be) more than just about having a beginning, middle, conflict, resolution, and end, it’s about making it personal and sharing how your learning has effected, changed and evolved you. Sharing stories, or making a narrative out of what you want to say, helps provide authenticity and will connect with the audience, it grounds the presentation in lived experience. The story needs to be told within a context or setting, and the characters provide us access to the drama as we learn about it through their eyes. We get to understand the human element of the research, the impact to the participants and how learning has been improved, lives enhanced, innovation adopted, etc.

Is your story good enough to hold the attention of an audience? An audience of your peers at a conference, or an audience of students in a lecture or classroom. Are you able to engage your listeners in a (your) personal journey and make connections with others by inviting them to participate in your story? Do you have any good examples of a narrative presentation?

What do you think? Should we be focusing more on narrative in our teaching as well?

I’ve set myself the challenge of making the presentations I do next year, more like stories/narratives and will look forward to hearing what people think about them…

(these reflections don’t take into account the potential of a good slide deck to support a story, or whether there might be a Twitter or live blog, back channel in action while you are presenting – might cover those topics in a future post)

Tags:, ,
Posted in conferences, professional development, teaching | No Comments »

slowing down enough to see what’s really going on…

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009

I was prompted to think about slowing down by something someone said at the Learning technologies conference I attended last week. They suggested that we spend time doing nothing so that we might be able to nurture our creativity. An excellent idea!

But then someone tweeted about a video that shows that a drop of water actually bounces! Filmed at 2000 frames a second, the video allows us to see exactly what’s going on when a drop of water hits the surface of water in a container.

I was struck by this amazing process that we can’t see with the naked eye – it happens too fast. This led me to think about how fast we are moving in our world of technology and education. I’m not sure if I can articulate this well, but I’ll have a go…

We need to see/know what is really happening at that interface between student/teacher/technology. What are the things that can’t be seen by observing? How can we slow down enough so that these things become explicit? They may be things like cultural understanding, world views, passions, interests, philosophical positions, or motivations. It may also even be useful for our students to come to understand what’s happening at the nexus between learning & teaching. We could help them see how learning occurs and what it does to them. This means we need to watch carefully – we need to employ tools to help us see what is hidden to the naked eye. We need tools like surveys, research projects, focus groups, feedback & evaluations etc. Can you suggest any others?

It may be paradoxical, but it takes time to slow down to see & understand the things that happen inside the hearts & minds of others. Time that needs to be invested (along with resources for tools) for us to understand more fully & to help us make considered responses to what we ‘see’.

Posted in learning, professional development, teaching | 2 Comments »

defining the digital divide by connectivity rather than age

Saturday, March 21st, 2009

I’ve thinking about difference and the challenges we have in encouraging the adoption of digital and learning technologies for learning and teaching.

The original idea of Marc Prensky’s digital natives and immigrants and more recently Dave White’s suggestion that it’s more about digital residents and visitors has kept me thinking about the best ways for me (as an early adopter) to engage those who aren’t keen on things digital.

I was chatting with my 15 year old nephew a while ago and he suggested he was a digital native and that I was an immigrant. I challenged him as to what he meant, and we had a good chat about using technology, being digital, and growing up with the Internet. Intitially he was probably basing his judgement on age rather than knowledge, expertise, and understanding. Carl Berger presented some research at the Apple University Consortium Conference in 2007 and mentioned a student (‘digital native’) who spoke about his knowledge of technology ‘being a mile wide but only an inch deep’. What the student meant, was that he had a broad experience, but a shallow understanding, of digital technology.

I’d suggest (as discussed in earlier posts in this forum) that we don’t really know to what extent students (let alone staff) know and engage with technology, it makes it difficult for us to develop policy and implement technology use to support learning and teaching. I came across Kate Carruther’s blog post, The Real Generation Gap, where she suggests that the difference between those who know technology and engage with “is about the individual’s relationship to technology and their willingness or desire to become and to remain connected.” Kate refers to Mark McCrindle’s report, ‘Seriously Cool: Marketing, Communicating and Engaging With Diverse Generations’ (.pdf). Is it really more about (as Kate suggests) being connected (having the willingness, desire and inclination) rather than age, that divides us?

This all resonates with me. I’m as engaged with social networking as my kids but I use it professionally as well as socially. I’m interested in the use of what I’ll call Web2.0 applications in education, but now asking questions about how willing others might be in taking up these ideas on communication, collaboration, and connection.

Does this mean that the adoption of social media and encouraging social networks in education (let alone anywhere else), may only work for those who are interested in using it. What does that mean for all those who aren’t? What does it mean for the curriculum? Do we understand that we may be disenfranchising both students and staff as we adopt more and different technologies?

I believe we need to think carefully about how we proceed and ensure that care be taken to ensure that any implementation be scaffolded in such a way that no one is disadvantaged or dismissed as a laggard for being negative or hesitant. We have a responsibility to understand and cater for the interests and limitations of our cohorts (of students and staff). What kind of support and activities could we provide to help narrow the gap – is professional development (in whatever form that might take) a solution?

Tags:, , ,
Posted in learning, professional development, teaching | No Comments »

« Older Entries