Piloting a Web-based Practicum Support Tool: Associate Teachers’ Perceived Benefits and Drawbacks

This pilot study explored how a small group of associate teachers responded to a web-based learning tool created specifically to support them in mentoring teacher candidates during the practicum component of an initial teacher education program in Southern Ontario, Canada. The learning tool's content drew from the teacher education literature, and its development was grounded in constructivist learning theory, web-based learning literature, and reflective practice. Associate teachers found the learning tool flexible, convenient, easy to use, and although they appreciated the non-directive nature of the learning tool, finding time to access and interact with the tool proved challenging. Associate teachers benefited from accessing and interacting with the learning tool, to varying degrees depending on their prior experiences, with improving feedback processes and practices, supporting teacher candidate planning processes, and facilitating teacher candidate induction emerging as three key areas of enhanced understanding and practice. Two key drawbacks of the learning tool included lack of human interaction, and sufficient time to interact with the learning tool more deeply.Cette étude pilote s’est penchée sur la réaction d’un petit groupe d’enseignants associés travaillant dans le sud de l’Ontario, au Canada, face à un outil d’apprentissage électronique conçu spécifiquement pour les appuyer dans leur mentorat de stagiaires. Le contenu de l’outil d’apprentissage est tiré de publications sur la formation des enseignants, et son développement repose sur la théorie d’apprentissage constructiviste, la documentation d’apprentissage en ligne et la pratique réflexive. Les enseignants associés ont trouvé l’outil d’apprentissage souple, pratique et facile d’emploi. Ils ont apprécié la nature non directive de l’outil d’apprentissage, mais ont signalé qu’ils avaient éprouvé de la difficulté à trouver le temps d’accéder à l’outil et d’interagir avec celui-ci. Les enseignants associés ont profité de l’accès à l’outil et de l’interaction avec celui-ci, à divers degrés en fonction de leurs expériences préalables. Les trois domaines clés où les connaissances et la pratique se sont améliorées sont les suivants : de meilleurs pratiques et processus de rétroaction, un soutien accru aux processus de planification des étudiants en pédagogie et une intégration facilitée des étudiants en pédagogie. Deux inconvénients principaux de l’outil d’apprentissage se sont manifestés, notamment l’absence d’interaction humaine et un manque de temps pour interagir avec l’outil de façon plus étendue.

Developing e-assessment using the quiz activity within Moodle: empowering student learning

Using formative assessment within Moodle has been shown to encourage self-directed learning (Bromham & Oprandi, 2006). Our experience of using formative assessment quizzes as stand alone entities, as well as within Moodle lessons, has been used to introduce Moodle assessment quizzes over the past year in Level 1 and Level 2 Life Sciences courses. This experience has been distilled to inform the content of this workshop. Some advantages of incorporating assessments in the form of Moodle quizzes are that they allow for quick, reproducible and flexible assessment with a relatively small initial set-up cost, and substantial long-term staff and administration savings. One significant advantage is that staff and room pressures can be reduced as students can attempt the assessment at a time and location of their choice within a specified time period. This flexibility can help to reduce student stress associated with completion of a continuous assessment for their course. It is also a relatively simple process to account for students entitled to extra time during assessments. Providing clear instructions beforehand and at the start of the quiz ensures that students understand their responsibilities for completion of this assessment and ultimately the course. There are some disadvantages and limitations to the system as it currently exists, for example there is the perceived ability for students to “cheat” by completing the assessment as a group, accessing books and the internet. Strategies to account for these can be put in place and will be discussed in detail during the workshop. This workshop aims to take the participants through the initial set up of a quiz, highlighting the various question types and how these can be used to create a challenging assessment that can be quickly graded and prove informative for staff and course development. Reference Bromham L. & Oprandi P. (2006) Evolution online: developing active and blended learning by using a virtual learning environment in an introductory biology course. Journal of Biological Education 41 (1): 21-25

Cloud Computing, Virtual Law Firms, and the Legal Profession

What does the future hold for cloud computing, virtual law firms, and the legal profession? Like so many answers in the legal field, it depends. The increasing costs of storing ever-increasing amounts of information may force firms to turn to housing data off-site through cloud-based services. New technologies, yet unforeseen, may render the cloud obsolete, replaced by a new form of caching materials. Virtual law firms may be looked back at five years from now as an obsolete fad, or the practice might instead become the new normal. Wherever the legal profession ventures, lawyers must do a better job of remaining attuned to technological developments that not only directly impact their practice, but also to those advances which can be adapted to a legal context to improve upon client service. In the end, lawyers must be competent advocates, and in the 21st century, ignoring technology seriously infringes upon that responsibility

Using Shared Workspaces in Higher Education

We evaluate the use of BSCW shared workspaces in higher education by means of a comparison of seven courses in which this environment was used. We identify a number of different functions for which the BSCW environment has been used and discuss the relative success of these functions across the cases. In addition, we evaluate the cases with the 4E model of Collis et al. (2000) which predicts the chances of acceptance of ICT in an educational setting. Effectiveness for the given task appears to be a prime success factor for using ICT. But an effective tool may fail due to other factors like ease of use and organisational, socialcultural or technological obstacles. The particular strength of a shared workspace, for which BSCW is most effective and efficient, is providing a repository for objects of collaborative work. Other types of usage showed mixed results. In the future we expect that learning takes place in an integrated, open ICT environment in which different kinds of tools are available for different purposes and users can switch between tools as appropriate. We could observe this in several of the case studies, where non-use of BSCW did not mean that a particular task was not performed, but, on the contrary, a more efficient solution for the same function was available. Shared workspaces have proven to be highly useful, but it seems advisable that their purpose be limited to what they were originally designed for

TLAD 2010 Proceedings:8th international workshop on teaching, learning and assesment of databases (TLAD)

This is the eighth in the series of highly successful international workshops on the Teaching, Learning and Assessment of Databases (TLAD 2010), which once again is held as a workshop of BNCOD 2010 - the 27th International Information Systems Conference. TLAD 2010 is held on the 28th June at the beautiful Dudhope Castle at the Abertay University, just before BNCOD, and hopes to be just as successful as its predecessors.The teaching of databases is central to all Computing Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems and Information Technology courses, and this year, the workshop aims to continue the tradition of bringing together both database teachers and researchers, in order to share good learning, teaching and assessment practice and experience, and further the growing community amongst database academics. As well as attracting academics from the UK community, the workshop has also been successful in attracting academics from the wider international community, through serving on the programme committee, and attending and presenting papers.This year, the workshop includes an invited talk given by Richard Cooper (of the University of Glasgow) who will present a discussion and some results from the Database Disciplinary Commons which was held in the UK over the academic year. Due to the healthy number of high quality submissions this year, the workshop will also present seven peer reviewed papers, and six refereed poster papers. Of the seven presented papers, three will be presented as full papers and four as short papers. These papers and posters cover a number of themes, including: approaches to teaching databases, e.g. group centered and problem based learning; use of novel case studies, e.g. forensics and XML data; techniques and approaches for improving teaching and student learning processes; assessment techniques, e.g. peer review; methods for improving students abilities to develop database queries and develop E-R diagrams; and e-learning platforms for supporting teaching and learning