From ‘hands up’ to ‘hands on’: harnessing the kinaesthetic potential of educational gaming

Traditional approaches to distance learning and the student learning journey have focused on closing the gap between the experience of off-campus students and their on-campus peers. While many initiatives have sought to embed a sense of community, create virtual learning environments and even build collaborative spaces for team-based assessment and presentations, they are limited by technological innovation in terms of the types of learning styles they support and develop. Mainstream gaming development – such as with the Xbox Kinect and Nintendo Wii – have a strong element of kinaesthetic learning from early attempts to simulate impact, recoil, velocity and other environmental factors to the more sophisticated movement-based games which create a sense of almost total immersion and allow untethered (in a technical sense) interaction with the games’ objects, characters and other players. Likewise, gamification of learning has become a critical focus for the engagement of learners and its commercialisation, especially through products such as the Wii Fit. As this technology matures, there are strong opportunities for universities to utilise gaming consoles to embed levels of kinaesthetic learning into the student experience – a learning style which has been largely neglected in the distance education sector. This paper will explore the potential impact of these technologies, to broadly imagine the possibilities for future innovation in higher education

Educational Policy and Open Educational Practice in Australian Higher Education

Open Educational Policy has become increasingly the subject of government attention globally, primarily with a focus on reducing educational costs for tax payers. Parallel to, yet rarely convergent with, these initiatives is an espoused sector-wide commitment to broadening participation in higher education, especially for students of low socio-economic backgrounds. Criticism of both open education and social inclusion policy highlights a deficiency in both the metrics used by policy-makers and the maturity of conceptual understanding applied to both notions. This chapter explores the possibilities afforded to social inclusion in universities by open education, and the case for an integrated approach to educational policy that recognizes the impact of a multi-causal foundation on the broader educational ecosystem

The potential role of Open Educational Practice Policy in transforming Australian Higher Education

Open Educational Practices (OEP) have played an important role in assisting educational institutions and governments worldwide to meet their current and future educational targets in widening participation, lowering costs, improving the quality of learning and teaching and promoting social inclusion and participatory democracy. There have been some important OEP developments in Australia, but unfortunately the potential of OEP to meet some of the national educational targets has not been fully realised and acknowledged yet, in ways that many countries around the world have. This paper will gather, discuss, and analyse some key national and international policies and documentation available as an attempt to provide a solid foundation for a call to action for OEP in Australia, which will hopefully be an instrument to assist and connect practitioners and policy makers in higher education

Transient School Communities: Education of 'The Great Wandering Class'

This paper makes a study of the education of children living at the Lock 7 and 9 construction camps between 1923 and 1935. While completing a Masters Project through the University of New England in 2010, I discovered the unusual situation whereby the children of men employed on a South Australian construction project were enrolled in Victorian schools for a period of time. The archival record of correspondence between the teachers and the Victorian Education Department at Lock 7 and 9 made fascinating reading as they tussled to obtain the necessary supplies and to administer a school with a finite life. School 4156, which began at Lock 9 near Kulnine Station in Victoria closed in 1926 and reopened six years later at a new location near the Rufus River in 1930. It finally closed at the completion of the works in 1934. Who were the teachers and what struggles did they have teaching the children of the great wandering class? This paper tells their story

First sighting of long-billed dowitcher, Limnodromus scolopaceus, in the Balearic Islands

First sighting of Long-billed dowitcher, Limnodromus scolopaceus, in the Balearic Islands. On the 9th October 2002 an immature Longbilled dowitcher was observed at a pool on the Es Ras section of Parc Natural de s'Albufera de Mallorca. It remained until 30 October 2002 and during this period it was seen and photographed by several observers. This is a vagrant species which breeds in the Siberian tundra region, in western and northern Alaska and the extreme north-west of Canada. Its appearance in Mallorca co-incided with 10 other sightings in Europe, scattered through Great Britain, Ireland, Norway, France, Belgium and Spain. This record is the first for the Balearics and is awaiting acceptance by the Spanish Rare Birds Committee, SEO.Primera observació de cegall de bec llarg, Limnodromus scolopaceus, a les Illes Balears. El 9 d'octubre de 2002 un juvenil de cegall de bec llarg va ser observat a una àrea inundada d'Es Ras, al parc natural de s'Albufera de Mallorca. Va permanèixer al mateix lloc fins el 30 d'octubre de 2002, i va poder ser vist i fotografiat per un grapat d'observadors. Aquesta és una espècie que cria a la tundra siberiana, al nord i oest d'Alaska i a l'extrem nord-occidental del Canadà. La seva aparició a Mallorca va coincidir amb altres 10 citacions a Europa, repartides entre Gran Bretanya, Irlanda, Noruega, França, Bèlgica i Espanya. Aquesta citació és la primera per a les Illes Balears i està pendent d'acceptació pel Comitè de Rareses de la SEO

Developing a Pedagogy for Reducing ‘Plant Blindness’

Despite human dependence on them, inattention to plants or plant blindness is a well–known phenomenon in urban societies. This thesis investigates the efficacy of a suite of novel teaching approaches for botany with adults and children and considers how these published research–based resources can contribute to a pedagogy for reducing plant blindness, in conjunction with the existing literature. This research was based on a mixed methods design using knowledge tests, questionnaires and interviews. It focused on two themes: novel methods for learning taxonomy (digital keys, mnemonics, drawing and game–playing) and drama–based methods for learning reproduction and classification. The literature review examined the characteristics of plant blindness and its impacts on teaching and learning. The fundamental cause of plant blindness was shown to be diminished experience with plants in urban societies which leads to low interest in plants compared to animals. A majority of pedagogic studies were based on learning with live plants, many of which were inquiry-based learning. Half the studies included outdoor learning and half used digital learning approaches. A content analysis of published research using themes based on theories of embodied cognition, memory and positive affect found the textual data to be evenly distributed across all three themes. The pedagogic approaches promoted learning through elaborative techniques, instructional tools with high usability, multimedia experiences and emotional wellbeing. Drawing and keys favoured observation over other perceptual modes, whereas drama facilitated multisensory experience. The research identified physical and cognitive factors that may assist or impede learning. A theoretical contribution of the research was the application of memory theory to learning taxonomy, advancing our understanding of how the design of keys and mnemonics may assist retention. Drama studies enhanced our understanding of children’s attitudes to plants and how a brief intervention may address these