Links to four papers I presented in the 1990s at the excellent Teaching Learning Forum in Perth which remind me that subjectivity and discourse are crucial terms which remain of great relevance to understanding why and how education works. Apologies for the archival publication! Click to read more
Elaine Tay (Murdoch University) and I have recently published a second article on the use of wikis in higher education for developing better student learning. This article, in International Journal of ICT Education, presents research into the attitudes and behaviours of students using wikis for individual writing tasks. The wiki-based assignment differs from the use of wikis normally researched because it was an individual task, not involving collaborative writing. We conclude that using wikis for individual writing tasks can, where appropriate active instructions are given to support development of cognitive abilities, lead to improved outcomes for students. Click to read more
Disclaimer: Live blogging Growing Knowledge: what is the future of research? (details) A Times Higher Education debate hosted by the British Library, featuring Matthew Gamble, David Gauntlett, Alex Krotoski, Ben Hickey and chaired by Phil Baty. Phil Baty starts the debate: it is fundamentally about the way that IT will profoundly change the nature of research. Introduces the speakers. Hickey (A-level student) Has grown up surrounded by network technologies and assumes they will be crucial at his time at university. he ponders however whether the research collaboration between people and computers might lead more traditional people to question the validity of his work because the boundaries between him as researcher and technology are indeterminate. [Cyborg researcher?]. perhaps universities, because of their traditional outlook, may hinder learning and research. On the other hand maybe technology creates too narrow a vision and the voice of experience from earlier times can shed revealing light on a problem. Points to a problem – younger people with whom Hickey spoke are largely uninterested in universities and research, seeing it as irrelevant and distanced from the real-world problems they face. What is revealing about Hickey’s contribution is the way in which someone who have grown … Click to read more
In 2009 I ran a series of workshops as the first main component of my ALTC Fellowship to group brainstorm and analyse ideas about online learning and web 2.0 technologies. During these workshops, so many good ideas were raised that I felt compelled to write up a report distilling the wisdom of more than 200 participants at 7 locations so that it might provide something of a guide for others. At the same time, as I reflected on the workshops and what happened within them, I realised that they gave me an insight into the discourse of e-learning and Web 2.0 versions thereof in contemporary Australian higher education. Thus, I have also reported my responses to and analysis of those workshops. It’s one reason why the report has taken a while to produce and finalise. Finally, then, here is the report Innovative Education Online: Ideas for the future of learning & the Internet My thanks again to everyone who attended and helped organise these events.
Here are links to and embedded presentations that I gave as part of the Learning in Networks of Knowledge project for the ALTC Fellowship I received in 2008. Click to read more
Listening to Michael Dyson, from Monash talking about portfolios in teacher education: great presentation. Dyson says: Education of educators is first of all premised on turning them into people who practice self-development. gives example of very first unit. [So, care of the self is central, and making students include themselves as subjects in the learning process - nice!] Learning is change dramatically – globalisation, computing, and so on. [But, perhaps, there is an important qualification on some of the more optimistic claims for 'new' learning: learning is embedded within society in ways that shape those possibilities in ways that are not entirely concerned with 'better' learning. At the very least, the definition of better is contested: is it cheaper? is it more orderly and commodifiable? is to linked to national norms and needs?] The creating mind is the goal. [Interesting - not creative, but more positive and active - creating. Good difference] Reflection is essential to achieving the kind of succcesses in self-developmental learning; using Dewey (2003), emphasises “active persistent and careful consideration”; reflection is not taking “things for granted…[leading to] ethical judgment and strategic actions” (Groundwater-Smith, 2003). [ Further work needed, perhaps, to understand reflection for this new generation, … Click to read more
See also other posts including the first one, on Web Communications 101, which explains more of the context. Web Publishing 206 (basic unit description) Students doing the BA (Internet Communications) learn, in WEB101, to create a web presence that acts as the primary locus of their online identity, with links to other services and applications. In Web Publishing 206, the focus moves much more directly to writing effectively for the web (where writing can also including other media, but emphasises the written word). The authenticity of the assessments in Web Publishing 206 are principally mobilised by requiring students to write regularly, on their blog, exploring different aspects and techniques of good online writing. The blog is assessed in its own terms, and also as the basis for students’ reflective essays which ensure that students are thinking about (as well as doing) this crucial online communication task. Some examples of students’ blogs are: Eighteen Songs – WEB206 Weekly Blog Percussive Sweet Spot On the Internet, No-one Knows I’m A Blog Damien’s Web Publishing 206 Weblog | The Worlds of MMO’s Notably, most students make virtually no reference to the ‘study’ component of these blogs: these are genuine blogs addressing audiences outside … Click to read more
The first of several posts, each relating to a different unit of study at Curtin Introduction Over the past two years, students in Internet Studies, Curtin University studying the BA (Internet Communications) and related courses have been doing a lot of authentic assessment involving online activities. These assignments are authentic in that they are ‘true’ to the content of their studies (that is, aligned with the outcomes), ‘ real’ within the likely fields of employment for graduates, and ‘natural’ for the the emerging dominance of knowledge networking in society. More on these three variations on authenticity in a moment. Not all assessments fit this pattern (nor should they), but we have seen significant improvements in the motivation of students to complete and exceed the requirements of assignments, as well as a greater degree of creativity and expression suggesting deeper engagement with learning. It has also, we think, improved students’ attention to more scholarly traditional assignments (such as essays) because of the variety we engendered across all assignment tasks. (And, it should be noted: essays are authentic – to the lifeworld of academic which also remains important as well as work and elsewhere). Much of what makes these assessment approaches authentic … Click to read more
On Thursday 2 December, I am presenting at the National Curriculum Innovation and Quality Forum on the subject, “Risks and opportunities in authentic learning via the Internet”. The basic brief for this keynote presentation is to: summarise approaches to authentic learning in the BA (Internet Communications) at Curtin University; identify the key benefits in using a public knowledge networking approach to authentic learning; and highlight risks and strategies for managing those approaches in the pursuit of authentic learning online. While I hope to do that, with a particular emphasis on giving some examples from the great work that students in the BA (Internet Communications) have done, I also have found that in preparing my talk I have had to develop a more coherent argument about the nature of authenticity in learning and the relationship between education and learning. The talk can be found here: http://netcrit.net/content/nciqf2010.pdf Slides are here: http://www.slideshare.net/netcrit/risks-and-opportunities-in-authentic-learning-via-the-internet This paper draws also on some specific work I have done on the authentic assessment in our online conference unit, Internet Communities and Social Networks 204 (slides here) and more generally on social media and authentic assessment (presentation in the UK, May 2010 here) Some of the examples I refer to … Click to read more
I recently answered an email from a colleague asking for advice about wikis, especially in the face of his university’s (inevitable) suspicion about anything that is not authorised, locked-down, served from the campus and generally (IMO) unusable for agile teaching and learning. I thought I would share an edited version of my views, since it neatly captures some of what I’ve been thinking about as part of my ALTC project on Web 2.0 and online learning. Agile teaching: responding to needs and concerns in the learning design of students’ experiences, activities and tasks which takes account of current events, new technologies in ways that institutionalised curriculum design and enterprise technology practices can’t cope with because they are too structured, clumsy and slow-moving. Agile teaching implies agility of mind as well as design and technology – it’s being playful, picking up and putting down, making limited and short-term commitments to particular ways of teaching and content, on the basis that it’s more fun, more engaging and ultimately more realistic as an educator and thinker to be moving forward, not circling the bureaucratic wagons Yes, we use wikis in our teaching, in two ways. First, some of the students naturally set … Click to read more
