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.

mlearn conference 2013 - proceedings

Via Google Scholar alerts, comes the proceedings from the 12th World Conference on Mobile and Contextual Learning (mLearn 2013). Conference was held in Qatar from 21 to 24th October.

Several papers are pertinent to our current 'project surface tablet' projects and summarised here.

• Exploring the impact of using tablet devices in enhancing students listening and speaking skills in tertiary education by Ismail Fayed,Amer Yacoub, and Ali Hussein from Qatar University. This reports on student's use of a range of mobile devices and apps to assist with communication skills in English.
• Post Web 2.0 Media: Mobile Social Media with Thomas Cochrane (Unitec, NZ) and  Laurent Antonczak. Of interest as it extends on work completed at Unitec to build a community of practice with lecturers involved in technology enhanced learning initiatives. Use of mobile technologies assist lecturers to 'learn by doing' before they implement similar approaches in their classes.
• Mobilogue – A Tool for Creating and Conducting Mobile Supported Field Trips with Adam Giemza. Mobilogue supports teachers and students to author and provide learning support with location awareness and guidance on mobile devices. Useful for field trips, museum visits etc. QR codes are used to provide access to information and GPS is used to pinpoint place and items for exploration.
• Large Scale Deployment of Tablet Computers in High Schools in Brazil is a case study of introducing tablets into public education system on mass. Potentialitites, pitfalls and recommendations are detailed.
• Creating coherent incidental learning journeys on mobile devices through feedback and progress indicators. An interesting article from a group of English researchers with Mark Gaved, Agnes Kukulska-Hulme, Ann Jones, Eileen Scanlon, Ian Dunwell, Petros Lameras and Oula Akiki. Recommends how timely feedback may be provided to learners through incidental or informal learning. Increasing learners' coherence of learning by bringing fragmented learning moments into a more cohesive learning journey for reflective learning.
• Key Challenges Associated with Bringing Personal Mobile Devices to the Classroom. Ieda Santos discusses the pros and cons of BYOD.

Then two articles on ethical issues using mobile devices.

• Poster by J. Wishart provides a good overview to the challenges
• paper by Trish Andrews, Laurel Dyson and Jocelyn Wishart on how to support practitioners implementing mobile learning.

Update on mlearning resources

Doing a catch up on mlearning resources this morning. A copy of paper presented at efest / teaching and learning conference at Ucol in October last year now archived along with several others via Ako Aoteoroa. Ones pertinent to mobile learning include Kathryn McCallum’s paper on ‘student characteristics & variables which determine mobile learning adoption’ and Thom Cochrane’s & Roger Bateman on their mLearning journey.

In addition, Thom has provided an overview of the Unitec mlearning projects in developing eportfolios using social networking sites using mobile phones as one of the many interesting projects to enhance student learning in the Ako Aoteoroa ' good' practice ebook.

Always good to check up on web based educational resources on Jane Hart's site.  There is a compendium of mobile learning tools which provides a good list for use with iphones/ipod touches, blackberrys and windows mobile phones.

A more theorectical aspect on mobile learning, which I have recommended our library purchases is a book on mobile learning:structures, agency & practice edited by Norbert Pachler, Ben Bachmair and John Cook. There is a preview of this book on Google books.

Mobile learning is no longer seen as being something which is still emergent.  There is now greater recognition of the advantages in investigating the use of mobile technology in enhancing learning opportunities for students. Part of this is the greater access everyone seems to now have to mobile phones. Using increasingly sophisticated mobile phones does assist educators in becoming more familiar with the use of this form of technology and awakens awareness of it's possibilities for learning.

Ascilite 2009 - day 2 - morning parallel sessions - mobile learning stream

Staying with the mobile learning stream this morning.

First up Norshuhada Shiratuddin and Syamsul Bahrin Zaibon from Universiti Utara in Malaysia. They report on two projects which used local game characters and contxts in a mobile game. This has led to improved student engagement and built capability in the development of mobile learning games which are locally contextualised. Good example of how to complement learning with play and entertainment.

Thom Cochran and Roger Bateman then present their learning from their work at Unitec with product design, performance arts and music students. Good to catch up with the evaluations of their project with a report on student views of their experiences in working with eportfolios using mobile phones.

Followed by Joan Richardson and John Lenarcic from RMIT University present their pilot implementation of a SMS system for student-academic staff admin info exchange. Allows for both "push" and "pull".


Last up Krassue Petrovs and Chun Li from Auckland University of Technology present on a framework for evaluating mlearning artefacts.

efest - eTLC2009 - day 2 afternoon workshop

Thom Cochrane presents on mobile learning with Roger Bateman (Design tutor) from Unitec. Demonstrated use of poll everywhere again which also allows you to embed into a powerpoint. Short history of cell phones including short clip from Lethal Weapon (1987) compared to what is now possible via vodaphone ad. (2008).

Followed by a demonstration of live video feed via qik. Live feed followed by video playback on qik almost immediately. Question followed on privacy on youtube. Students tend to enjoy sharing their work with others online but also important to form community of practices in the form of study groups which assist students in using the technology. Students choose technology based on the context they are working in. Eg. Design students rejected iphones as they did not have good cameras & could take videos which was part of design students’ specific learning direction.

Student work was showcased. Video of a students’ mlearning scenario with photos of drawings etc. on a Nokia N95. Students’ organisation of the end of year grad design show focused on mobility on Prezi including using a qik video, using GPS to show people how to get to the show & photos of how to collect evidence using camera, microphone for her studies. Using fring to chat, twitter etc. Site on ning to archive student work to build sustainable habitats which included discussion forums etc. Mobile integration provides an email link for students to email photos etc. into the site.

Important to find the correct hardware which matches the requirements of the course and the students’ expectations. Use of the technology needs to be seen to be an advantage for the student. WiFi capability on mobile phones or devices important to cut down on costs related to mobile web browsing. Support sites set up on Unitec LMS along with the weekly meetings with students to help with technical challenges.

Thom also showed livestream as a way to store & show case videos. Costs of pre-data is dropping esp. for Vodaphone allowing for photos & videos which cost less than txt messaging.

efest unconference - morning session

Plane arrived 20 minutes late at Palmerston North & then no taxis at the airport! So had an impromptu tour of PN before getting to UCOL for the annual efest teaching & learning conference. Got in at the end of Peter Mellow’s opening presentation & morning tea.

Unconference involved breakout into 3 rooms to discuss a range of issues. I stayed pretty much in the one room where we had sessions on Smartphones, 21st century literacies & eportfolios.

Other sessions on learning management systems, teaching with technology, learning design & virtual worlds (the SLENZ project). Sessions were supposed to be consolidated and shared with other groups using the conference wiki, twitter, a info. wall etc.

Smart phones session facilitated by Thom Cochrane from Unitec. We all shared our experiences working with mobile projects & Thom did an overview of mobile possibilities.

We explored bluetooth then a play with texting to poll everywhere (Aussie site)

Then a quick tour of qik (which allows many mobile applications to run on it) eg, videos, photos, GPS which can be streamed in live & once captured can be uploaded up on youtube. The collate on lifestream which allows live streaming as well as chat.

We also cruised through geo tagging, micro blogging, txt notifications (possible within Moodle but costs!), student podcasting (Mac or iphone only).

mlearn2008 day 3 last day

Then I attended an eclectic mix of presentations in the ‘mobile learning, mobile knowledge & mobile societies strands.

Starting off with Dan Passey (Lancaster University) on using mobile technologies to convert ‘digital natives’ to ‘learning natives’. A gap analysis is used to detect learning domains that may be considered in encouraging better learning. Domains are mega-cognitive, cognitive, meta-cognitive, motivation, social & societal. A large number of affordances that supported learning were compared so that affordances that are well supported, poorly supported or not supported by mobile learning were presented. Activities that support learning should therefore be ‘snap & show’, ‘review & reflect’, ‘think forward’, ‘listen to my explanation’, ‘this is what I’ve done & how I have done it’ and ‘tell me how I could improve this’.

Followed by Thom Cochrane’s presentation on the mobile trials at Unitec began with a Vodaphone TV advertisement that has been running recently in NZ. The overall concept is to use access to web 2.0 via Nokia smart phones to collate the evidence of learning and to organise their learning (Gmail, calendar etc.) & to construct an eportfolio using Vox. Moodle is used to hold supporting material for the students. Evaluations from students indicate that students were receptive to the use of mobile tools to provide evidence of their learning.

‘How informal is mobile learning’ by comparing mobile VLEs & mobile PLEs was the topic of Wen Pin (Ben) Chen and David Milliard’s (University of Southampton) presentation. Firstly, there was a comparison between VLEs & PLEs. The key difference is that VLEs place control of learning on the teacher & PLEs on the learner. A four dimensional model of formal learning (why, where & when, who & what & how) along with whether the learning is teacher, student led or negotiated is used to analyse the papers presented at mLearn2007 to see what types of mlearning is currently taking place. Only 3 of the 17 papers presented fell into the formal learning environment therefore mlearning supports informal learning.

The day’s formal presentation sessions ended with Christopher Plimmer from Switzerland who investigated the area of workbased mobile learning to find answers to the question ‘How can mobile devices be used to support employee learning processes’?
Scenarios of the use of mobile learning in the workplace were presented to research participants to find out how feasible the scenarios were. Guidelines that were distilled included the need for content that would be just in case but well integrated into the work that needed to be completed, opportunities for social interaction that included coordination, coaching, collaboration and reflection & the production of learning sequences.

The afternoon was taken up with the AGM of the Association of Mobile Learning.

Conference ended with handover to mlearn2009 which will be in Orlando, Florida under aupices of University of Central Florida. Plus forward information for 2010 which will be held in Malta (organisers are the University of Malta).

iPhone coming to NZ in July

Exciting news for m-learning enthusiasts in the local paper on the arrival of the 3G iPhone to NZ. Vodaphone will be offering these for sale on July the 11th – only about 30 sleeps away. There is no indication of the price yet but most people who are keen to get their hands on one will be hopeful that the prices will be similar to the ones in the US of A.

Thom Cochrane has been off the mark quickly with his evaluation of the iPhone. On my part, I have had a look at several ‘unofficial’ iPhones plus an iTouch and have to say that the touch screen interface is intuitive and an improvement on the one on my Treo 700wx. Roll on July when I will get my hands my own and I can try out the touch screen applications on Jane Hart’s site.

TEC fund application - unsuccessful

Thom Cochrane from Unitec, Nick Ford & myself, put in an application late last year to the TEC for funding via the ‘encouraging & supporting innovation’ fund. The overall proposal was to use evidence based research studies to build guidelines for the implementation of mlearning with vocational / tertiary students. With the funding, we were going to extend on our present projects with apprentice bakers to include apprentice chefs, possibly also builders or plumbers. Thom’s work was with Unitec students studying design and music. The emphasis would be in using mobile phones to allow students to collect evidence of their learning and to make use of Web 2.0 tools to archive, collate and eventually showcase their work. Mlearning meshed with social networking sites will lead to greater interaction between learners, tutors, employers and the learners’ social circle (including their friends and family). Ease of access often leads to better motivation and engagement in learning for students who take up vocational based training.

Unfortunately, our application was turned down. The feedback provided said that it was “because the rationale for the intervention was not strong and it lacked evidence". I emailed the good people at esi support to find out what the above meant & to glean some learning from the experience, so that our next application would be more concrete and contain more evidence. There is another round of applications to be considered in May, so we will put in a revised application to see if we are able to meet the criteria required.

It’s been over a fortnight since I emailed esi support & I have not, as yet, received a reply from them. So Nick & I will work through our existing application and update to reflect requirements provided in the one sentence feedback. Thom, as always a pragmatist, has suggested that perhaps the evaluators did not understand the implications of the concepts proposed in our application. Therefore, we will need to supply a more detailed description (using examples of work that we have already completed) to provide a sense of the potential that our mlearning project has towards contributing towards a better understanding of how to make use of mobile (both hard and software) technology.

Much of our work stems from our daily interaction with young people and their use of technology in their daily lives. From textually org blog comes two blogs this week about how technology has changed the way in which young people socialise and inter-relate.
One is Rich Ling’s book, New tech, new ties: how mobile communication is reshaping social cohesion. The book looks at how the mobile phone affects the two kinds of interactions via mobile communication and face to face. Ling finds that the use of various social rituals the mobile phone strengthens social ties with friends and family but sometimes at the expense of interaction with those who are actually physically present.

The other is an article from the economist magazine on homo mobilist which reports on research at MIT by Shelley Turkle on how the use of ‘mobile tools’ leads to ‘the emergence of a new kind of person’.

These very recent studies provide a strong reason for me to continue my mlearning research and to be persistent about applying for funding to provide adequate resources for studying the sociological aspects that my mlearning research is continually revealing.