Drama and technology: Teacher attitudes and perceptions

Educational systems are continuing to prioritise the importance of technology in learning. Curriculum guidelines and frameworks from across the globe insist that all learning areas find ways to utilise appropriate technologies in the teaching learning process. Drama Education is one area where the use of technology seems to be quite limited. The study seeks to determine some emerging understanding of the perceptions and attitudes held by Drama teachers about the introduction of Interactive and Information Technology (Digital Environments) into classroom Drama practice. Of particular interest to this researcher is the seeming reluctance to engage with such technology. Drama educators from all levels of education were invited to complete the survey via email and the Drama Education: A Global Perspective website will contribute to the study. Since the study functions in an essentially interpretive and descriptive mode it was not expected that generalisations will be forthcoming, although there do emerge some relational understandings as well as implications and considerations for future introduction of so-called digital environments in Drama, and related issues such as resourcing, professional development, and pre-service training. Additionally, this study identifies areas of need and/or deficiency within school structures in relation to technology access and requirements for Drama educators. This is especially relevant to the Western Australian context as education sectors are engaged in curriculum improvement programs that necessitate cross-curricula and integrated practices

Indigenous perspectives on integrating learning technologies in a tertiary enabling program

The Centre for Aboriginal Studies at Curtin University offers an Indigenous Tertiary Enabling Course designed to equip Indigenous students for entry into mainstream university degree programs. While the program is highly regarded, it is argued that opportunities offered by incorporating contemporary learning technologies to allow more effective student engagement can deliver more successful outcomes. With this in mind the Centre has undertaken to introduce the use of tablet devices (iPad) and notebook computers (MacBook Air), which will enable a strategic shift towards a more student-centred, technology, integrated model of student engagement with anticipated enhanced outcomes. The Centre has undertaken to trial the use of online teaching and learning strategies in semester 1, 2014. At this pre-tertiary level, it is anticipated the advantages of a student-centred experience will become evident as the trial moves through the year. This paper describes the current conditions and staff perceptions after the first year of implementation as well as comparing outcomes from the most recent ITEC cohort

Digital Badges in Education

Digital badges provide new affordances for online educational activities and experiences. When used with points and leaderboards, a badge can become a gamification element allowing learners to compete with themselves or others, and to know how close they are to accomplishing a goal and acquiring its accompanying reputation. In this role, badges motivate continued engagement, which increases time on task and supports skill acquisition through performance. Learning outcomes signified by badges can also be displayed in an e-portfolio or on web sites and are highly transportable to social media sites. In this role they summarize achievement and signal accomplishment. With these characteristics, digital badges have the potential to become an alternative credentialing system, providing visible recognition in digital symbols that link directly via metadata to validating evidence of educational achievements in public displays. This paper will trace the brief history of digital badges, define what they are, give examples of their use, and discuss their educational affordances

A scholarship program for academic staff to develop exemplary online learning tasks

There is a strong impetus for blended learning approaches to be more widely adopted in higher education but finding an effective model for professional development of teaching staff can be problematic. In 2009, Curtin University developed an eTeaching and Learning Scholarship program for academic staff to develop exemplary online learning tasks that could be shared with the university community and inform future online teaching within their disciplines. This paper describes the design of the professional learning program together with early encouraging results that indicate both the willingness of the eScholars to incorporate additional learning technologies to extend the affordances of the university provisioned systems and to embrace authentic learner-centred tasks

Education for sustainable development: A study in adolescent perception changes towards sustainability following a strategic planning-based intervention-the young persons' plan for the planet program

© 2019 by the authors. In 2016, the United Nations (UN) launched the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a framework for sustainable development and a sustainable future. However, the global challenge has been to engage, connect, and empower communities, particularly young people, to both understand and deliver the 17 SDGs. In this study, we show the benefit of a strategic planning-based experiential learning tool, the Young Persons' Plan for the Planet (YPPP) Program, to improve the underlying competencies of Australian and Mauritian adolescents in increasing understanding and delivering the SDGs. The study was conducted with 300 middle to senior high school students, in 25 schools throughout Australia and Mauritius, over an 18-month period. The intervention included the development of research, strategic planning, management, STEM (Science Technology, Engineering, Maths) and global competency skills in the students, to enable them to build and deliver regional and national SDG plans. Research methods included pre- and post-intervention testing of the attitudes of these students to sustainable development outcomes and compared these attitudes to subsets of scientists and the Australian national population. Our results, from both qualitative and quantitative evidence, demonstrate significant improvements in these adolescents' appreciation of, and attitudes towards, the SDGs and sustainable outcomes, across a range of key parameters. The results from the 76 students who attended the International Conference in Mauritius in December 2018 demonstrate significant improvements in mean levels of understanding, and attitudes of the students towards the SDGs awareness (+85%), understanding/engagement (+75%), motivation (+57%), and action orientation/empowerment (+66%). These changes were tested across a range of socio-demographic, geographic, and cultural parameters, with consistent results. These findings have significant implications for the challenge of sustainable education and achieving community engagement and action towards the SDGs in Australia and Mauritius, particularly for young people. As the intervention can be replicated and scaled, the findings also highlight the opportunity to extend both the research and this type of experiential learning intervention across both broader geographies and other generation and community segments

Virtual worlds in Australian and New Zealand higher education: remembering the past, understanding the present and imagining the future

3D virtual reality, including the current generation of multi-user virtual worlds, has had a long history of use in education and training, and it experienced a surge of renewed interest with the advent of Second Life in 2003. What followed shortly after were several years marked by considerable hype around the use of virtual worlds for teaching, learning and research in higher education. For the moment, uptake of the technology seems to have plateaued, with academics either maintaining the status quo and continuing to use virtual worlds as they have previously done or choosing to opt out altogether. This paper presents a brief review of the use of virtual worlds in the Australian and New Zealand higher education sector in the past and reports on its use in the sector at the present time, based on input from members of the Australian and New Zealand Virtual Worlds Working Group. It then adopts a forward-looking perspective amid the current climate of uncertainty, musing on future directions and offering suggestions for potential new applications in light of recent technological developments and innovations in the area

Australian educational technologies trends 2018

Educational Technologies represent the wide range of digital tools used by teachers for teaching, students for learning, and administrators for managing schools. New tools are continually in development and often repurposed for an educational context from other industries. The following technologies have been considered as the five most significant for schools over the next 5 years, along with cost and professional learning requirements

How are Australian higher education institutions contributing to change through innovative teaching and learning in virtual worlds?

Over the past decade, teaching and learning in virtual worlds has been at the forefront of many higher education institutions around the world. The DEHub Virtual Worlds Working Group (VWWG) consisting of Australian and New Zealand higher education academics was formed in 2009. These educators are investigating the role that virtual worlds play in the future of education and actively changing the direction of their own teaching practice and curricula. 47 academics reporting on 28 Australian higher education institutions present an overview of how they have changed directions through the effective use of virtual worlds for diverse teaching and learning activities such as business scenarios and virtual excursions, role-play simulations, experimentation and language development. The case studies offer insights into the ways in which institutions are continuing to change directions in their teaching to meet changing demands for innovative teaching, learning and research in virtual worlds. This paper highlights the ways in which the authors are using virtual worlds to create opportunities for rich, immersive and authentic activities that would be difficult or not possible to achieve through more traditional approaches

A Philosophy of Open Digital Badges

One of the most promising educational technology tools, open digital badges, is quickly changing curricula, job acquisition, and workforce credentialing. Learning data, assessments, and expert validation made accessible in social media create a transparency that may well be suited for critical questions in education. Operating from a framework of establishing how badges are currently employed in learning—the influential contexts of individuals and communities, and data aggregation—raises questions concerning the roles of instructors, badge providers, and learning management systems. This “philosophy” of digital badges addresses a variety of epistemological concerns including the intersection of challenges to conventional educational motivation, suggestions of how Platonic and modern models of education are complementary, and implications of how badges may represent postmodern credentialing systems. These concerns are framed around understanding how current work in digital badges can feasibly transform learning; this is both an acknowledgment of how badges are beginning to change ecosystems of informal and formal learning as well as an attempt to demonstrate how an epistemological philosophy of badges can change educators’ thinking and accelerate innovation