ASCILITE - Bringing Australasian Technology and Practice Trends into Focus - 2022-2023 Contextualising Horizon report

 ASCILITE publication - provides a contemporary reporting of the digital technology and practices across Australasia. 

Porter, D. B., Campbell, C., Logan-Fleming, D., & Jones, H. (Eds.). (2023). Bringing Australasian Technology and Practice Trends Into Focus: The 2022–2023 Contextualising Horizon Report. ASCILITE. 

The practices are thematic organised into: hybrid and flexible learning; AI literacy; mental health and well-being; the evolution of mobile learning; and integration of indigenous knowledges.

STEEP (social, technological, economic, environmental and political) trends affecting how technology is availed and practices resources and supported, are discussed.

Social trends, post-pandemic, mean there are new ways of working, both within industry and academia. However, the pandemic also revealed the many challenges of digital equity and inclusivity, which have not been solved. The main technological influence presently, is Gen AI which requires workforce capability to be built. Advances in augmented and virtual reality, also require capability to be resources. The current rise in the cost of living, the reshaping of the higher education workforce, and a move towards skills-based hiring, all affect economics. Environmental concerns include the design of physical spaces to provide for more flexible work, learning and teaching, initiatives to support diversity, equity and inclusion, and the need to maintain and meet future sustainable development goals, are all important. Political forces include current and possible/impending global disruption, changes in government funding models, and the inclusion  of first people's.

Of note in the exemplars for the hybrid/flexible learning theme is the Ara midwifery programme's networked-distributed model.

All in, a good update on where the sector is at with digital technology approaches towards tertiary education. 

Ascilite day 3

Third day of the conference dawns fine and sunny. After the best poster, paper awards, we are on to the keynote of the day with Professor Carmel McNaught from Chinese University of Hong Kong on technology supported innovation. Do we have adequate evidence for claims of success. Are core principle from one's own ontology transferable? Why, when we have so many tested tools and strategies, is the uptake of educationally sound learning designs limited? Presented on changing contexts, evaluation research and evaluation research, paradigms and mixed methods, LEPO framework and innovation life cycle, project examples, implications for institutional policy and processes and summary of principles. Recommended new media consortium annual horizon report for 2014. Need for continual evaluation and research to cope with fast pace of technological change. 

See McNaught(2011) on evaluation as part of blended designs. Philips, McNaught and Kennedy (2011) types of evaluating research (book-2012), the LEPO framework.McNaught, Cheng and Lam (2006) on good evaluation research. Reeves (2006) on design based research instead of predictive research. 

LEPO framework is on learning environment, processes and outcomes within an educational context. LE facilitate LP lead to LO which determine LE. Consider also the innovation life cycle, project management evaluation for baseline,messing, formative and effectiveness. 

Provided 5 examples. As overview see Lam, Lee and McNaught (2010;2011) found positive experiences for elearning if used to meet student learning needs. Examples from eportfolios with students learning English - needed buy in from teachers.

Use of forums across 13 courses - use SOLO to analyse quality of postings, forums worked if structured but student centred.

Mohan and Lam (2005) investment banking working on peer learning evaluation and assessments. 

Teachers using social media 

Implementing collaborative interdisciplinary scenario inquiry tasks in large science classes. University of Queensland and Australian learning and teaching council project. 

Interactive collaborative assessment system called IS-IT to allow group tasks and peer assessments to take place.

Implications - encourage students to do the work; reward through policies and processes. 

After morning tea, I pick up the learning analytics theme its associate professor Cathy Gunn's from University of Auckland paper on defining the agenda for learning analytics. Broad context of educational data mining, web analytics,ml earning analytics, recommender systems and business intelligence. Connect educational design research to learning analytics contribute to evidence based educational practice. McKenney and Reeves (2012) on educational design research. Potential of LA to add to data and achieve linking of assumptions about learning and learning design intent to the learner behaviour , learning processes and outcomes it produces in meaningful and reliable ways. Not just asking students but using LA in non invasive ways to find out similar things. Thing through what can really achieve with LA and we must do to exploit potential. How can we translate data to be meaningful to teachers? Can we convince our institutions we have a duty of care to use LA? 

Next presentation is on exploring students' interpretation of feedback delivered through learning analytics dashboards with Dr. Linda Corrin and Paula de Barba from the University of Melbourne. Current focus seems to focus on retention and providing data to academics. Need to provide data to students and support them with how to interpret and progress from data. 2000 plus students across 2 first year and 1 second year courses. LA needs to consider differences in learning design of courses. Pilot consisted of survey to capture demographics, think aloud interview in week 3, week 11 and final survey on motivation to study. Dashboard provided for access, learning activities, quizzes etc. themes were reflection, study strategies, motivation, class average, consolidated view and interpretation. Students could work out strategies but could not explain why. Motivation improved for most students. Consolidated view appreciated. Interpretation weak. Positive outcomes mostly. 

Last paper on the development of an application with process feedback to enhance student centred learning with Sudhakaran Edathil, Christopher Chin, Stephanie Zank, Dev Ranmuthugala and Susan Salter from University of Tasmania. Presented by Christopher Chin. Reinforced efficacy of timely feedback and examples of assessment and feedback tools available. Desire2learn but can be shifted across to other LmS. Learning mode is fully guided, assessment modems partially guided and assessments itself is not guided. The guided path scaffolds students with revealing each step in the algorithm and each step also has a hint to assist self learning. Student feedback positive on the process feedback tool. 

After lunch, comes the drive back home to Christchurch.

Next years Ascilite is in Perth hosted by Curtin University. 

Ascilite day 2 afternoon

After lunch Wayne McIntosh updates on OER university The OER foundation is a non profit organisation providing support for OER. oERu made up of an international collection of educational institutes. At the moment, NZ has 6 plus 2 none teaching organisations and Australia has 6. Made links between OER and sustainable business models. So how does OER contribute to the sustainability of your institute? Discussed copyright and absurdity in present world. Updated on Creative Commons licensing. BIG vision for institutions not provide only 2 courses to OERu and provide free learning opportunities to any learner. Assessments could be offered on fees for service model. OER provides support and technology services, content provided by institution and assessment and accreditation through fee for service. OER based on personalised learning environment with content on wiki educator and an aggregator to link other cloud based tools. Provided example presented by Niki Davis this morning on a course also linked to Moodle. So where do MOOCs stand? The university of Canterbury post grad course with 121 participants from 14 countries. Retention rate was good and integration of quality. Parallel modes of delivery with full fee paying students and open also to OERu courses raising international awareness of home institute and providing cross cultural experiences for students. OER is low cost and high impact. 

After the keynote, I attend the learning analytic SIG. Carolyn Steel provides parameters for SIGs. Shane Dawson is the leader but unable to be here, so Leah MacFadyn assist to gather objectives of the group. Ethics of data and data governance comes up as something everyone is interested in progressing. Need to share practice and use SIG site to collate resources. Collate various research projects completed and in progress. Group prioritised 4 activities to work towards. 

After afternoon tea, I catch up with Stephen Marshall and Jonathan Flutey's (from Victoria University) work on turning a digital vision to reality. Shared process of building support for technology and learning. Challenges identified in 2010 with a reactive unstructured adoption of technology, misuse of LMS as DMS, technology as admin rather than pedagogy etc. vision and strategy for 2012 to 2018 on university website. Focus on learning design and provision of a seamless service across all support and teaching learning. Technology facilitated student experience in terms of physical and digital facilities for formally scheduled learning, informal learning invited by student, individual learning supported by campus facilities and social community scholarly activities which are campus and public. Jonny provided example of introducing technology in specialised teaching areas and need to set up experimental rooms. Virtual innovation incubator to allow academics to play. Building capability is organisational with a start by stocktake of digital skills required. Goal orientated capability building eg. Flip classroom defined for process, pedagogy and technology with badges attached to each goal. Mentors identified to form distributed learning network.

Then a concise paper with John Clayton and Sarah-Jane Saravani on creating digital self reflective frameworks to encourage learner autonomy in post graduate courses. Shift from knowledge acquisition to how students learning. Move from knowledge management to portfolio focus. Critical skill for learner is reflection. Students provided framework to develops critical reflective skills. Tool build to provide students with needs analysis to self identify in 4 domains. Traffic light indicators provide information for student and tutors and assist start of conversation on student responsibility and support. The learner knows and needs scaffolding to work towards own learning goals through learning project. 

Attend SIG on  innovations in tertiary education delivery summit led by Peter Guerin from the NZ Ministry of Education. Peter provided background. Last year MOE provided a paper on MOOCs which led to conference on the broader range of innovative tertiary education. Out os the conference came issues like accreditation plus current system as not supporting students to move seamlessly through. Group discussed questions. How can providers design delivery to achieve consistent results and best support learners? What sorts of issues could arise from new models? What will happen for teaching and learning? Output and outcomes?

How will new technologies cater for different kinds of learners? What are differences as learners between young people? Older students? Those with high learning needs? Those in employment or with other commitments? 

Conference dinner in the evening rounds off another busy day. 

Ascilite day 2 morning

Day 2 begins with a keynote from Professor of elearning Niki Davis from the University of Canterbury. Niki presents on 'prizing' open eduction as in getting to grips with and with treasuring. We are good at doing new things and seeking new ways but we are not so good at finding out whether what we do is any good. Call to revisit the trends scenarios set up after the DEANZ conference in 2009. Shared notes are on Google doc http/tinyurl.com/ascilite2014

Four scenarios are articulation, supermarket, self determination and quality brand consortia. 

Provided example of development of a MOOC on technology diffusion and models of change in education. In conjunction with Wayne McKintosh as MOOC deployed OER. Course in 2013 as a micro MOOC alongside a normal course with OERu.

Challenge of open journals as resource for the MOOC and ease of access to journals by DEANZ and ASCILITE.

Has technology improved education for all? Digital equity gap not diminishing. New project elearning for adults with literacy and numeracy needs. Need to ensure elearning is relevant to and useful for adults with literacy needs. Re engage and motivate students in a variety of ways to suit individual needs - truck drivers with low literacy and mobile work, use mobile computing as focus. More communication and tutors feedback suited to device ownership and work context. Family communication, grand parents digital literacy. Culturally appropriate with informal and familiar environment. Numeracy in authentic situated learning. Application of games where relevant. 

Elearning needs to think about global and equity aspects. 

Ascilite awards made for innovation and excellence to University of Queensland flip classroom, Macquarie University and Auckland university for work in portfolios in health science.

Life membership to Gregor Kennedy. 

After morning tea, concurrent session begin and I chair 3 papers. First up, Jo Lander from the University of Sydney on the role of the interpersonal in online knowledge construction. Reports on investigation on asynchronous discussions potentials and challenges. Importance of building an online discussion community but student tend to not be able to reach higher level of critical thinking through learning based on asynchronous discussions. In 3 context on communicable disease, obesity and tobacco control. Used linguistic discourse (systemic function) to analyse discussions to establish interpersonal, ideation/ knowledge building and textural / mode/genre. Provided examples from the data to study how community building proceeds, instruction giving. Expectations for knowledge construction include bring in prior knowing, a synthesis  or transformation, opinion or argument etc. need for moderators to open space for other voices. Interactions between moderator and students and between students were rarely challenging, negative and / or critical. Online discussions become blends of conversation and academic, fragmented, incomplete and jointly constructed. So, academic writing not practiced and discussions do not use language of academia. Implications on social media Type relationships and disconnect to academic discourse. 

Second session with Salome Meyer from EIT with blended learning: student experiences. Blended learning of 5 Batchelor degrees through merger of 2 institutes in 2011. Evaluated student experience with BL with focus on development and delivery across skills. Study in 2012. Prior to start of BL most students who completed the survey had not experienced online learning. When BL started, majority of students expressed positive engagement with online learning. Students felt support for shift to online learning was insufficient but most other including taking responsibility for learning and flexibility. Staff capability was an issue which students picked up. Recommendation to develop comprehensive plan to support BL initiatives. 

The third session is with Penelope Rush from the University of Tasmania wide open listening: what is it really like to be a distance student? Survey undertaken to improve support services to students and raise awareness of support. Survey of 1000 plus students a 17% response rate. Themes through grounded theory included enables self determinism, flexibility, necessity, location and positive. Highest responses in flexibility with the second in necessity. Worse aspects included isolation, resources responsibility, unconsidered balance/ travel. Distance learning improvements included improvement of resources, contact, consideration, communications. Flexibility needs have to be balanced with synchronised sessions by webinars or similar. 

Ascilite day 1 afternoon

The keynote after lunch is with Associate Professor Shane Dawson from university of South  Australia on what are we learning from learning analytics? Student data can be used to track academic, social and personal. LA actually around for many years but called different things like intelligent tutoring etc. but now ease of data mining creates too much information. lA still focused on what rather than why. Personalisation of learning possible but mainly concentrated in key skills and foundational content with drill and revise approaches. Examples of cognitive tutor include knewton and knowillage. Education management like analytics assisting with retention and identification of at risk students e.g. Course signals feedback (Tannes, 2011). Focus on learning process is still missing. Most projects still based on small scale and tends to be very context specific with guidance lacking to help further adoption.

National project now in progress to benchmark LA across 39 Australian universities and with 30 experts. Find out how to focus on learning process, broad range of data and recommend how to implement LA. Gap between how education administrators and researchers understand purpose of LA. plus most institutions still stuck at level 1 (Goldstein and Katz) of LA implementation. Two models, solutions focused or process focused. Solutions focus are it or industry or learning and teaching. Process on individual faculty or networked/ integrated. Discussed pluses and minuses of each and how moving solutions or process towards higher relevance. Currently a solutions model is usually it driven presenting data in dashboards etc with success being whether staff access the data. 

Cross organisational groups need to be used to develop LA. Needs to be problem focused. For LA to work staff capacity a key along with organisational buy in and support. Remember education, learning and organisation are complex. Complex leadership theory (Ulh-bein et al.) recommended as a method to manage complex tasks with complex teams. lA is not a technology, dashboard or one individual. @LA is team based and dynamic and requires planning and thought. 

 In the after lunch sessions, I chair 2 sharing practice sessions. The first one is with Stanley Frielick, reporting on progress on the Ako Aotearoa national project on mobile learning. The project involves 6 institutions with a diverse range of discipline areas. Each team presented briefly on their work to date.  Twitter #np14lmd. Stanley introduced the overall project objectives and encouraged catch up at poster session as each team has a poster on their project. Kathryn from EIT presented members of their communities of practice and approaches exampled by student ebook creation. Objective to build skills outwards from original team to increase institutional capability. Vickel from AUT presented examples of what has been worked with audio of tutor reflections and how student learning was changing to become more reflective and meta cognitive. Sam from Otago Polytechnic presented on designing for student success institutional project with example of carpentry collecting evidence of house build and use of Squawk which is LMS with ability to capture informal learning and offers feedback. Adrienne presented Auckland University use of Google + community to record thinking and learning while teacher trainees were out on school experience. rena presented on use of Pinterest to form eportfolios. James from Unitec showed examples of early childhood students and augmented reality with students embedded augmented reality content to digital resources. 

Then Michael Sankey and Helen Carter from USq report in 'benchmarking your capacity for technology enhanced learning. Presented on the ACODE initiative involving Australian and Nz universities and polytechnics. Formalised benchmaking provides opportunities for institutions to share practice. Overviews the revamped technology enhanced learning ACODE. Places institutions within broader sector wide context. ACODE meets 3 times a year. ACODE investigates, developing and evaluating new initiatives and developments to assist best practice. First developed 2004, revised 2007 and reviewed latest version 2014. 8 benchmarks. Latest revision better aligned with learning and teaching, planning around innovation and emergent technologies, sustainability and quality fro externally sourced systems. In June, 24 institutions from 5 countries participated in latest benchmarking exercise. Overview of process, self assessment within each institution involving internal stakeholders to decide on where institution stands with each indicators and collection of evidence and writing rationale; then all indicators compared to find if self assessment accurate; providing sharing of practice. 

After afternoon tea, attend 2 sharing practice session. First one on 'bringing digital literacies to students without Internet access' with Helen Farley from the Australian Digital Futures Institute at USQ. 61% of worlds population do not have access to the internet! Check http://bit.ly/without Internet to share experiences of teaching without the internet. 44% of students on foundation students in 2012 did not have Internet access but USQ moving towards all resources being digital and accessible online. Some students do not have access to electricity. Presented learnings from projects set up in correctional centres to think through how to better cater for learners without access to Internet. Still important plan. Determine context of your learner. If there is some Internet identify core resources so students download when they are able to and get resources up early. Investigate mobile interconnectivity and keep things simple. Use ePub, self marking quizzes and keep download files which are small. Recognise that collaboration is difficult, have alternatives to digital assessments. Sometimes not able to offer in offline environment. 

Second session on digital learning thresholds for whole institution with Romy Lawson fro University of Woollongong. Shared experience of move from blackboard to Moodle with tools like mahara, echo360, Equella, edublogs, turnitin, parature and other tools. Task and finish groups were formed to complete projects, consultations with stake holders and endorsements by relevant committees. Started from work of others to inform project and match to local context. Discussion and and sharing of what others have done. 

Then poster sessions where I present poster on CPIT project surface tablet, work to date and in progress.

A visit to the settlers museum and dinner out with CPIT staff closes a longish day.