Toitū te Tiriti - Staying the course of Te Tiriti honouring - session notes

 Was unable to get to the presentation, from Allen+Clark yesterday. The webinar is provided free by Allen+Clark to help organisations upskill in cultural competencies

The recording was made available and here are the notes taken as I listened to the presentation from Dr. Kathie Irwin and Jen Margaret.

After a traditional welcome /karakia with Jacqui Taituha Ngawaka, the presentation began.

The presentation went through experiences and insights from Tangata Whenua (the people of the land) and Tangata Tiriti (people of the treaty) on organisational, tiriti honouring and practical strategies and actions to take to honour, commit and thrive with the Tiriti,

Allen+Clark staff undertook training and development across 2023 including in-house, online and workshops with Kathie and Jen.

Both Kathie and Jem introduced themselves (in Māori).

Katie begain with summarising the significance of the Tiriti for both Tangata Whenua and Tangata Tiriti. There were 25  questions for the presenters to address. Katie summarised these.

Provided the background from the creation story to provide the foundation of how to better understand the Māori perspective which informed Te Tiriti as it was written in 1840. The creation story frames the previous and current actions around Te Tiriti, anchored in Māori epistomology and perspectives.

Aotearoatanga - how nation building occurs into the future, helps direct us in how the Tiriti is honoured into the future. Used the kohanga reo as a case study of the future focus and direction of how Māori vision is not limited to one stream, but how this is interwoven across many other initiatives, to develop and support te reo from birth, through to life span. 

Explained how decades of policies - the machinery of government - have been misaligned with the intents of Te Tiriti and even now, is work in progress. The current government's review of many of the alignments between Te Tiriti and public policies, is a step backwards, which may take many years to reverse :(  In essence, western perspectives' differences with Matauranga Māori, create many tensions, which require great effort  and co-operation, collaboration / partnership to shift. A braided river (Professor Angus MacFarlane, 2015) is one way to compromise but also to have each stream coalesce as they come together. Other ways include the Tiriti Whare decision making model by Professor Whataraingi Winiata and E tipu, e rea, with Sir Apirana Ngāta.

Jen continued with the work undertaken, as a Tiriti Tangata, to how she came to better understand her whakapapa and how this is drawn on to inform her ongoing journey to understand Te Tiriti. Explained how the relationships between the British Crown and Māori can be better understood. Stressed the important of all, to honour the treaty within the whanatanga sphere. In the past, the Crown/government has applied their power and in the present, finding a balance that respects both, is the important objective. 

Constitutional transformation is required (check Matike mai Aotearoa). At an organisational level, there are structures and processes than be followed (Check Ngā rerenga o Te Tiriti) to help shift from a monocultural to a pathway that recognises bicultural ways to practice.It is important to find a starting point and to travel the pathway. Tangata Whenua are allies (Haumi) with relationships. Self-determination is an important precept, so moving forward as an organisation requires good relationships and cooperation.

Important to have conversations not only in the professional sphere, but with family/friends etc. Use the current controversy presented by the Treat principles bill to open conversations and to help others understand the importance to Te Tiriti to Aotearoa future.

 Q & A / Patai followed. 

Cogniti mini symposium - notes from a few presentations and summaries from some recorded presentations

 Cogniti users and administrators organised a mini symposium, offered both online and f2f on 5th November 2024.

Three streams of presentations taking place over 2 1/2 hours. I could only get to a few in between meeting and facilitating workshops.

Notes taken from a few presentations.

- Personalised exam preparation using AI in large cohorts - Dr. Helen Mcquire and  Dr. Angela Sun (University of Sydney) context of microbiology/ immunology course. A bespoke AI agent was used to increase teacher presence with students. Went through the rationale and processes to build the chatbot. The important learning from this one, is how it is used by the lecturers, to identify knowledge gaps amongst their learners. Shared AI limitations - repetitive questions, Ai not providing direct exemplar responses. Invited potential collaborators to get in touch.

- Practice makes perfect: AI powered oral assessment preparation with Jim Ennion from Toi Ohomai. Presented on how a virtual client prepares students to become immigration advisers.Used Cogniti to help students prepare for an oral assessment. Cogniti was set up to act as a client. Prompts were set up with scenario information, set the tone to informal/not educated, have uncertain outcomes. Unfortunately, the agent hallucinated and provided incorrect information. However, student engagement was high with positive outcomes. assessment outcomes were marginally better for students who took the opportunity to use the agent.

- Always on teacher: AI brings business studies to life with James Cooper from Scots College, Sydney. Here the teacher formed an AI version of himself  (Cooper Jr.) to support students learning business at school (Year 11 and 12). The AI tutor could provide practice questions, mark student responses and help deepen content understanding. The curriculum is very prescribed, so that helped to ring fence the content. Main guide was to provide student support - replacing emails to students, generate revision questions and generate sample responses that are achievable by the students. Described process taken to built the agent. Student feedback was positive. Challenges around imprecision and working beyond the sylllabus scope. Short answers were 'double barrelled' and 'US style'. Shared the work currently to refine the agent, improve short-answer reliability, and mark essays and reports.

Last week, the various recordings of presentations was made available. Below are summaries of a few of relevance at present to my projects.

Notes from videos of presentations

- Reimagining research and writing learning through AI assistants with Dr. Lucy MacNaught and Dr. Kiri Hunter from Auckland University of Technology. Used Cogniti to help guide Masters of Nursing Science students to write research proposals. An intensive programme with many assessments. The view was that students did not have time to even look at feedback from one assessment to the next. Cogniti agents were used to encourage drafting and ongoing gradual improvement of their research proposal. Used Humphrey (2016) teaching and learning sequence to ground their work. Basically, used AI to provide feedback at each stage of the research proposal workflow. 

Christie Oldfield from Auckland University of Technology presented on 'enhancing subjective interview skills through AI role-play' in a physiotherapy context. Health care interviews are important to establish rapport with the patient but also to ensure that patient information is obtained to support the therapy sessions. Agent was created to monitor how student progressed through a patient interview. 

Plenary closed the symposium. This is presented by Danny Liu, Leitizia Wan, Sam Clarke, Minh Hubyn and Kria Coleman from the University of Sydney DVC (education).

Reflections from the symposium and work undertaken and ideas to take things into the future were covered. Overall, good examples of using Gen AI to support constructivist learning. 

instructional design unleashed - link and brief overview

This is an open access book (provided through UTS library). Th book is authored by A. J. Mangtani and published by Springer.

It is quite a large book - over 600 pages long with chapters collated into two sections.

The first section has 5 chapters covering the science of instructional design. Chapters include overviews of the anatomy of instructional design, the science of learning and its theories, learner attributes and learner modalities, pedagogical, andragogical and heutagogical approaches and Universal Design of Learning (UDL). All in, these chapters provide good coverage of the foundational knowledge and applications for instructional design. 

The second section has 6 sections and these cover the 'art' of instructional design, that is the 'how to' aspects of instructional design. Chapters cover instructional design models, objective taxonomy, storyboarding, assessment, feedback and evaluation approaches, publishing the learning journey and AI in instructional design.

Overall, the book covers the essentials of the traditional approaches to instructional design and would be useful as a text book for instructional design students and a reference for educators who are designing meaningful and engaging learning.

Becoming A scholarship in teaching and learning scholar - book overview

The Centre for Engaged Learning at Elon University, North Carolina has published an open access book - Becoming a SoTL scholar.

The book is edited by Janice Miller-Young and Nancy L. Chick.

After the introductory chapter (Chapter 1) - developing sustained SoTL journeys and identities by the editors, the book has 17 more chapters, organised into 4 sections. 

Section 1 has chapters on 'beginning a SoTL-centric career. There are 5 chapters in this section. Each worth reading. with one chapter (chapter 6) set in an Australian context.

Section 2 covers 'shifting focus towards a SoTL agenda'. This section has 5 chapters including a chapter (Chapter 9) by H.L. Marsh and E. De Courcy on - from industry to SoTL: Making the case for taking the leap.

Section 3 - sustaining SoTL engagement has 4 chapters detailing the challenges and supports required to engage in SoTL through the academic career.

Section 4 - becoming a SoTL scholar has 2 chapters. The book closes with the last chapter as an editors' epilogue.

The book is worth dipping in and out of. Although much of the work is in the North American contexts and with Westernised perspectives, there is much across the many chapters in the book to inform the development and nurturing of SoTL practices. Of note is how many academics 'fall into' SoTL, gain interest and passion from the processes of SoTL'. There is also need to have formalised and planned support for SoTL has in doing, SoTL leads to enriched academic careers, enhanced outcomes for learners, and contributes much to our understanding of learning and development.