Workshop & presentation from Laurent Filliettaz at Victoria University, Wellington

Travelled up to Wellington yesterday to meet up with Associate Professor Dr. Laurent Filliettaz, from the University of Geneva (currently on a one year sabbatical at Griffith University).  The workshop & lunch time presentation was hosted by Professor Janet Holmes, from the School of Linguistics at Victoria University.

Both the work of Laurent & Janet's team are pertinent to my 'studying the learning of trades students using multimodal discourse analysis' project.  I will begin stage one of this project with funding from the CPIT foundation early next year. The funding provides sufficient money to obtain hardware & pays for a small amount of research time for me and for one trades tutor (Flip Leijten who teaches welding).

Laurent's work & that of his team, Ingrid de Saint-Georges & Barbara Duc is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation Professorship programme. The project began at the end of 2005 and runs until January 2011. The main objectives of the programme is to understand apprentices' perspectives of how they gain knowledge, skills and experience identity transformation during their apprenticeship, the perspectives of trainers and teachers on what skills are required to teach or train apprentices & the potentials & limitations of the Swiss 'dual' traning system.

The overall programme was to study the Swiss dual training system whereby students attend school for 1 to 2 days and work as apprentices in the workplace for 3 to 4 days.  The current system has its challenges including difficulties with placing apprentices and poor completion rates. 

The main data collection method was to collect video evidence of workplace interactions between apprentices and trainers in both vocational school workshops (3) and at workplaces (7).  Three industries, motor mechanics, automation specialists and electric assemblers were involved.  150 hours of video evidence was collected, providing a rich corpus of evidence to study.

The main activities studied were knowledge transformation and transmisson, transitions and identity construction, the aspect of time in action and learning and the continuities and boundaries between schools and workplaces.

During the lunch presentation, Laurent presented 4 video vignettes with their accompanying transcripts and interpretations.  These were based on a case study of a new apprentice starting out in a electrical assembly workplace.  The presentation provided a good example of the power of using video based evidence in collecting workplace based apprentice / trainer interactions.  Especially rich evidence of how apprentices have to negotiate for their learning opportunities, the techniques / strategies workplace trainers use and the interactions apprentices have with other workers.  This reveals issues with power, communication or mis-communication in the workplace, language use in vocational learning and the transitional issues faced by school leavers as they are inducted into the workplace.

All in a worthwhile day to talk to many of the staff at the School of Linguistics and to have see examples of multimodal data collection and analysis.

ipod touch for enhancing student learning

The more I play with the ipod touch, the more I excited I am with its potential for enhancing student learning. There are many examples, mostly from the school sector to learn from. Last week, the local paper’s technology section featured the the ipod touch plus a cheap phone as an alternative to owning an iphone (cheapest option with $40 a month plan for 24 months comes to almost $2000) compared to under $400 for a ipod touch 8G & a couple of hundred $$ to purchase & run a phone.


As an alternative to using netbooks, the ipod touch is more suitable as individual student hardware. The smallness of the device means that doing group work on the ipod touch will be more difficult then with a netbook. Small groups of 2 or 3 will work though. However, maximising the use of the ipod touch must include the need for each student to have one and a robust wifi network to cope with multiple users all accessing the network at the same time.

Examples of the use of ipod touches in education are plentiful. Louise Duncan is one who has set up a good resource including a list of the apps she uses in class & a list of ipod touch tips from students.

Tony Vincent, always an great advocate for mobile learning provides a good overview of educational possibilities for the ipod touch including good tips & tricks.

Wired educator (Mr. Croy) has an Apple slant which covers all sectors of education and has good overview of the use of the ipod touch in education and examples from his students .

A good collection of resources for use of the ipod touch in education from Chris Webb. And a whole host of examples of using ipod touches in education from Classroom 2.0 a social network on Ning.

Apple also has a recently published (July 2009) official guide to educators for using the ipod touch. So lots of examples to distil, try out and evaluate. Plus to work out how best to make use of the ipod touches capabilities within a blended learning environment.

ako aotearoa southern hub research projects colloquium

Attended & presented at the Ako Aotearoa research projects last evening. The Southern Hub (2 other hubs are the Northern & the Central, both in the North Island) is able to provide up to $10,000 to support research projects which lead to better learner outcomes. Nine projects presented on research progress & some findings. All in, an interesting session as each project had relevance to the tertiary sector, provided an interesting collection of research approaches and showcased the interest in research taken by each of the presenters. We had 10 minutes each (8 to present & 2 for questions!) but each presentation was supported by a one page handout which provided pertinent background & project details.

First up, Ronnie O'Toole from the University fo Canterbury with Alison Ogier-Price. Their project was on investigating the role of emotion in tertiary teaching. A pilot to gauge how emotions experienced by tertiary educators influence their teaching and student learning in the classroom. Collection of data was via 'emotion diaries' kept by 17 participants & based on Oatley & Duncan (1992) & Sutton (2004). Participants were also interviewed. Data still to be analysed.

My presentation followed on 'perspectives of new trades tutors' - interim report - which is on the intense vocational identity trades people have & how a process of 'boundary crossing' is required to help trades people accept & incorporate the identity of a teacher. A draft of my report has been circulated to the Southern Educational Developers (SED) group & will be discussed at a meeting next week. After that a final report will be completed by end of this month.

Next up, Gareth Archer from Community Colleges New Zealand on the influence of traditional sports & games on soft skill development for Maori youth. It involves the revival of a game ki-0-rahi (youttube video) which is played on a circular field & where one team (kioma) scores tries and the other (taniwha) scores by hitting a central target.

Nick Draper also had a sports slant, developing pedagogy for exercise science in tertiary physical education programmes. In particular to investigate how to consolidate knowledge aspects of exercise science which is often taught in 'chunks' & at different times during a course / programme so that students are able to bring together the a 'whole person' understanding of how physiology works.

Moving on the the early childhood sector, Elizabeth Elsworth, from the College of Early Childhood Education presented on 'sharing minds: promoting a research culture within a tertiary environment through mentoring relationships. Elizabeth used the concept of ako (knowledge & learning in Maori) to underpin the relationships between tutors and students, so that each learnt from the other during research mentoring sessions.

Then Gerry Duigan from CPIT poster/banner project. This project is in it's evaluation stage. The first stage was to select 10 sayings which were useful for adult educators to display in classrooms or web pages. Then banners were produced and dessiminated to 30 institutions in the South Island to gauge responses. These are now being collated & once evaluations have been actioned, the final banners will be produced and access provided via the Ako Aotearoa website.

A collection of health related projects began with Phillipa Seaton (plus 7 others) from CPIT & Pegasus Health presenting on 'practice nurses' learning needs'. The project is still in progress but has, to date, distilled five top learning needs and predominant learning styles of practice nurses.

Arindam Basu then presented on his project (involving 7 other researchers) on 'training for telehealth' which is a form of health by distance. the project reviewed current telehealth for teaching the concept/ process and based on the review, develop a 'best practice model'.

Last up, Paul Watson & Deb Sims from CPIT presented on their project which is to evaluate the quality of workplace learning for student nurses. The project was also to establish the validity & reliability of a 'clinical learning environment, supervision & teaching scale' -CLES+T developed in Finland, to find out if the scale would be usable within the NZ context.

All in a good session ably organised and hosted by Ako Aotearoa Southen Hub convener, Bridget O'Regan & Pat Robertson.

ipod touch and the MLE project

About a month a go, I picked up two ipod touches funded by the CPIT academic research committee. Renaissance computing, the agents for Apple in NZ kindly provided two ipod touches (an 8G & a 32G) for the price of one 8G :) So I have been busy over the last week or so having a play to evaluate the potential for it’s use with various mlearning projects. Being away much of October has provided time while travelling to work with the ipod touch and to utilise and evaluate its many capabilities.

Comprehensive information is provided on the apple site for using itunes, the main way to transfer information between PC and ipod without going online. Unfortunately, the ipod touch touch does not run with the mobile learning engine plug in for Moodle but accessing our normal Moodle using a web browser has always been an option.

Good starting point to the 1000s of ipod touch apps plus here is one which includes an app to turn your ipod touch into a remote control for itune PC! This one includes the app video piggy to download youtube videos.

I also downloaded stanza to convert ebooks to read on the ipod touch with a good guide from this site on how to read ebooks on the ipod touch.

From the education point of view, there is itunes u for courses, top tips on using the ipod touch for learning by Jonathan Nalder, a teacher from Queensland and a slideshare ppt providing examples of using ipod touches in learning.

The user interface for the ipod touch is intuitive to use, picture and sound quality also good. At just under NZ$400 for an 8G ipod touch, it is an accessible mobile alternative to a desktop or smartphone. The many apps available, many free and most at an affordable price provides an indication for the future role of software on mobile devices. Apps are also a cinch to download and although many are little ‘play’ apps, many provide useful utilities to enhance productivity at work and learning opportunities.

Only bugbear is no camera/video but the ipod touch does have a good voice recorder. The new ipod nano has a video camera so maybe a video camera is going to be in the next model of the ipod touch?

ako aotearoa academy symposium - day two afternoon

Afternoon began with a session by Dr. Peter Coolbear on 'staying in limelight - the future of the Ako Aotearoa Academy. He covered Ako Aotearoa's strategy for championing excellence in tertiary teaching & learning. Emphasis is changing along with locus of activity towards becoming more strategic with an advocacy role on future government policy development. Emerging strategic themes are to develop a 'second front on 'threshold of acceptability' for advocacy?, evidence based enhancement of practice, strategic, sustainable support of Maori educator/learners, also with Pacific educators & learners, supporting the learner voice & working in partnerships.

Oriel Kelly then facilitated a discussion on the future priorities for the academy. Groups worked on how the academy may meet individual members' needs, how academy is able to work with Ako & how Ako supports the academy.

Last session was organised and facilitated by the Massey University Teaching Excellence at Massey (TE@M) with their Vice Chancellor, Hon. Steve Maharey, academy members from the Waikato, Bay of Plenty & Dr. Craig Pritchard also from Massey.

ako aotearoa academy symposium - day two morning

A busy morning with variou presentations and workshops.

first up, three award winners provide a view of 'how did I get here?' The three presenting are Prof. Gary Bold, Karl Dodds (both Prime Minister award winners) & Dr. Rachel Fewster (winner of two awards - 2003 & 2009). Gary's humour came across well during his presentation on techniques for lecturing to large classes. Rachel covered 'how to make 90% of students love statistics?' providing a good example of how to make a subject interesting by building on what students know & providing relevant 'real life' problems & reasons for why they should solve them. Karl covered the more serious side of winning the award including increased levels of expectations from students & other colleagues.

Second presentation from Dr. John Reynolds on "the impact on curriculum change on health sciences first year students' approaches to learning". He presented on a study which used a learning inventory (the approaches and study skills inventory - ASSIST) to measure if curriculum change on students' approaches to learning. John provided good examples of how the curriculum has been changed in structure (eg. student study groups formed) and objective (deepening understanding & links between concepts to made) and the results of an evaluation using ASSIST to find out if there were changes in students learning (surface, deep, strategic). Found surface similar to pass cohorts, strategic increased but significant increase in deep learning.

Dr. Lisa Emerson then lead a session on the new criteria for the Tertiary teaching excellence award. Lisa is the academy representative on the TTEA panel & found the experience to be inspiring & a great privilege. Background provided to assist academy members in mentoring potential applicants for future TTEAs.

Great presentations from all :)

ako aotearoa academy symposium - day one - afternoon

Two main sessions this afternoon. The first one is three discussion groups to produce position papers for the academy. These are on teaching excellence (facilitated by Pip Lynch & Juliet Gerrard), Scholarship of teaching (with Peter Mellow) & quality enhancement process in education (with Karl Dodds & Rachel Fewster). I chose to attend the session on scholarship of teaching as a continuation of my project on "perspectives of trades tutors." Group discussed the definition of 'scholarship' which has various connotations depending on teaching subject and institution.various papers put by Peter on to the Ako website were discussed with expectation of others to put more papers on plus need to perhaps do a literature review of the field. group then organised to work out how it will work together towards producing a position paper by December!!

After afternoon tea, Welby Ings, facilitated a session on 'challenging some debilitating myths', using story telling as a method to elicit our philosophies on teaching & learning. Welby modelled the power of story telling by firstly narrating a story to us. Group work then followed on using narratives in teaching. A good session which provided a good opportunity to explore the deeper issues related to using narratives in enhancing learning, especially metacognition and attitudinal transformation.

ako aotearoa academy symposium - day one morning

Symposium began by Dr. Peter Coolbear, Ako Aotearoa director with a karakia. Then welcome from Donna Buckingham who is the president of the Academy to the symposium 2009 - turning vision into promising practice.. Hon. Wyatt Mapp, associate Minister of Tertiary Education then provided the official opening. He covered the macro picture, tertiary education strategy, the research /science / technology strategy & how the academy may assist with bringing some of these strategies about. John Hosking summarised the academy's response and thanked the minister for his encouragement and support.

First key note from Dr. Sally Kift on "a transition pedagogy for first year curriculum design and renewal". Sally provided results from a review conducted via a Australian Learning & Teaching Council fellowship. This was pushed by a recognition of the growing diversity of students and the need to engage, support and realise a sense of belonging for first year students in tertiary education. A transitional pedagogy was proposed around the identification of six first year curriculum principles. These are transition, diversity, design, engagement, assessment and evaluation & monitoring.


My workshop followed after morning tea. I covered the usual ground of the move of hardware to mobile, software to the cloud & humanware to virtual social networking = everyware. I provided the opportunity for participants to explore a range of web 2.0 tools which may be useful in various teaching & learning contexts using small group activities supported with Dell Minis on loan from AUT and organised by Peter Mellow. An opportunity for partcipants to get to know each other better & to share ideas & applications of various web 2.0 tools with examples from their teaching contexts. Plus the challenge to use these tools for their own professional development and for students to 'do the work to do the learning.'

ako aotearoa academy symposium - afternoon second session

Second half of the Ako Aotearoa Academy symposium provided for two concurrent sessions to run.



One from Peter Mellow & Paul Denny, who facilitated a session on Web 2.0. A session from which I would build on for my presentation tomorrow. Attended the session on research funding so had to give this one a miss. However feedback from the others who attended this session indicated blogs, wikis etc. were covered by Peter & Paul covered Peerwise which supports the construction, display & organisation of student generated multiple choice questions.



Kirsty Weir, research manager from Ako Aotearoa, ran a 'funding clinic' to provide information on the various funding streams available for research in education. Always good to recieve some clear indication of what is expected when applying for funding. All in a very helpful session.

ako aotearoa academy symposium - 28/10 afternoon

Over the next few days, I am attending (& presenting again!) at the Ako Aotearoa academy symposium. This is open to all winners of the New Zealand excellence in tertiary teaching awards. So for the next few days, a busy programme unfolds with various keynotes, workshops, presentations and academy organisational matters.

First up this afternoon - which is a pre-symposium workshop - is Professor Sally Kift from Queensland University of Technology - on 'engaging diverse first year student cohorts: Moving from theory, through policy to action", with some good links to a proposed project I am hoping to begin on studying the first year experiences of first year apprentices.