Inclusion and online learning opportunities: Designing for accessibility

Higher education institutions worldwide are adopting flexible learning methods and online technologies which increase the potential for widening the learning community to include people for whom participation may previously have been difficult or impossible. The development of courseware that is accessible, flexible and informative can benefit not only people with special needs, but such courseware provides a better educational experience for all students

A vignette model for distributed teaching and learning

Computer software and telecommunication technologies are being assimilated into the education sector. At a slower pace, educational methodologies have been evolving and gradually adopted by educators. The widespread and rapid assimilation of technology may be outstripping the uptake of better pedagogical strategies. Non‐pedagogical development of content could lead to the development of legacy systems that constrain future developments. Problems have arisen with computer‐based learning (CBL) materials, such as the lack of uptake of monolithic programmes that cannot be easily changed to keep pace with natural progress or the different requirements of different teachers and institutions. Also, hypertext/hypermedia learning environments have limitations in that following predefined paths is no more interactive than page turning. These considerations require a flexible and dynamic approach for the benefit of both the teacher and student. Courses may be constructed from vignettes to meet a desired purpose and to avoid the problems of adoption for the reasons that programmes cannot easily be changed or are not designed to meet particular needs. Vignettes are small, first‐principle, first‐person, heuristic activities (which are mimetic) from which courses can be constructed Vignettes use an object‐orientated approach to the development of computer‐based learning materials. Vignettes are objects that can be manipulated via a property sheet, which enables changing the object's inherent character or behaviour. A vignette object can interact with other vignette objects to create more complex educational interactions or models. The vignette approach leads to a development concept that is horizontally distributed across disciplines rather than vertically limited to single subjects

Course developers as students: a designer perspective of the experience of learning online

Academic developers of online courses may not have experienced this mode of learning and teaching from the learner perspective. This article makes a comparison between suggestions for online course design from research literature and user perspectives from a focus group, responses to questions on the most and least effective aspects of online study and lasting impressions, and from reflective diaries kept by two of the authors while they were engaged in study from online courses. This direct evidence is used to highlight key issues in the literature from the viewpoint of the learner

Giving effective and interactive presentations

Length Half day Objectives The purpose of the workshop is to help presenters to get away from the 'death-byPowerPoint' that so many of us are subjected to at conferences. A traditional approach seems to be to have as many slides as possible and to talk quickly in the short timeframe often allowed at conferences. Adopting a more educational approach based on learning and teaching principles (that presenters no doubt apply elsewhere) helps overcome the traditional transmission model so often used at conferences. By considering a particular educational model (which is not prescriptive), objectives are to enable participants to consider their presentation style in relation to learning outcomes for both the presenter and attendees, and to engage the audience in acceptable, relevant and meaningful activities

Promoting reflective dialogue through group analysis of student feedback

This paper describes an activity intended to promote scholarship of teaching through small-group discussion of feedback from students. There is a paucity of literature on group reflection of student feedback which this paper aims to address. Reflection on teaching is often a lone activity but this Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC) supported project afforded the opportunity for group reflection by teachers from five institutions during our first project workshop. To provide the data for group analysis, students from the participating institutions completed a survey designed by the project team. A workshop activity was devised in which groups analysed the qualitative survey responses and derived principles for learning and teaching based on their reflection. Evaluation of the activity included workshop participant evaluation forms, feedback from the ALTC project team and evaluator; and the principles developed during the activity. A notable measure of the activity’s impact is that most participants stated that as a result of the workshop, of which this activity was a significant part, they intended to change something about their own teaching

An Action Learning Approach to Changing Teaching Practice Using Group Reflection on Student and Graduate Feedback

We present a model for a collaborative activity intended to promote scholarship of teaching through small-group discussion of feedback from students. Reflection on teaching is often a lone activity and this is reflected in the paucity of literature on group reflection, however literature suggests that lone reflection on teaching can fail to conform entrenched attitudes. This paper describes the process by which we collected data on students, and former students learning experiences; prepared the qualitative data for discussion by cross-institutional groups; structured the discussion activities to maintain focus on cultural change; and evaluated the activities’ impact. The activity was carried out as part of our ALTC-supported project’s first academic forum and repeated during the second forum, with refinements to the procedure based on evaluation of the first activity. Data collected for evaluation of the first and second iterations of the activity suggests that it is an effective strategy for the promotion of scholarship of teaching and the associated development and implementation of changes to teaching practice

The crisis in ICT education: an academic perspective

A national Discipline-Based Initiative project for ICT, funded by the ALTC, has sought to identify the issues and challenges facing the sector. The crisis in ICT education spans high schools, universities and industry. The demand for skilled ICT graduates is increasing yet enrolments are declining. Several factors contribute to this decline including the perceived quality of teaching and a poor perception of the ICT profession amongst the general public. This paper reports on a consultation process with the academic community. Academic concerns include the capacity of the sector to survive the downturn, and improving relationships with industry which should benefit students, academics and industry. An outcome of the consultation process has been the formation of the Australian Council of Deans of ICT (ACDICT) which will have broad responsibility for addressing the issues affecting ICT higher education

Guidelines for online learning in soil science: A synthesis of ideas from academics, students and employers

As part of an ALTC-supported curriculum development project, we engaged teaching staff, employers, current students and recent graduates in the discipline of soil science to develop a set of guidelines for online learning in our discipline. During a one-day Forum, three experienced practitioners in online learning design in engineering, science and health presented and discussed their approaches with the forum participants. The forum attendees then developed guidelines for online learning in soil science based on their personal experiences together with the presentations. The resulting guidelines were compared with the literature and a very good match found in assessment, content, communication and feedback, motivation and groupwork. Two additional aspects that apply particularly to teaching soil science in Australia were identified, namely the importance of defining agreed outcomes that take into account regional differences across academic institutions and accommodating the broad range of prior knowledge that students of soil science bring to online courses

Developing Transferable Research Skills in First Year Agricultural Economics Students

A problem-based learning approach was adopted for a unit of study in first year agricultural economics at the University of Sydney with the aim of starting development of students’ research skills earlier than usual. The novel teaching approach employed a structured and guided problem activity in the first semester and progressed to a more authentic problem activity in the second semester where the students worked in online peer groups to identify their own problem within a specified challenging area (market failure), carry out research and discuss findings prior to submitting an individual essay on their chosen topic. A structured learning journal with 10 questions was used in the second semester where the students recorded their reflections on a range of aspects of the learning process. None of the questions specifically asked about research yet 72% of the students mentioned it at least once. These learning journals were analysed for unsolicited comments about learning and research to gauge what the students themselves believed they had learned about research and how it can be transferred to other disciplines and future employment. The final essays were independently analysed by using eight research performance criteria to estimate the degree of research skills displayed by the students. Most of the students performed well in six of the research criteria indicating that development of research skills can be initiated in the first year of a degree program

Perceptions of a gender-inclusive curriculum amongst Australian information and communications technology academics

The lack of female enrolments in ICT is widely recognised and has prompted a range of strategies to attract more women, most of which do not include curriculum changes at any level. Research suggests that there are aspects of the ICT curriculum that could appeal to females, particularly in relation to benefits to society and humanity in general, and that including these considerations in the curriculum would be of interest to all students. The perceptions of a gender-inclusive ICT curriculum in Australia have been ascertained from a survey and forum discussions of ICT academic managers and leaders of ICT learning and teaching. Although a significant proportion of the surveyed academics recognises that different features of the ICT curriculum appeal to males (mainly technology) and females (mainly the benefits of the technology to humanity) this has not translated into the practical implementation of a genderinclusive curriculum in most institutions. Most respondents would welcome informative guidelines on developing a gender inclusive curriculum