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This Wednesday I'm involved with an experiment and presentation that is seeking to test out some alternatives for lectures/presentations. As it happens, the last week has brought a couple of events that are (so far) helping the case for the experiment. These are described below....more...
Last week I attended a presentation by a colleague at CQUniveristy titled The Bureaucratic Model of Adult Instructional Design. The stated purpose of the presentation was...more...
A couple of colleagues and I are trying to kickstart a little thing we call the Indicators project. We've developed a "tag line" for the project which sums up the core of the project....more...
I've just been to a meeting with a strangely optimistic group of people who are trying to gather "real stories" about what is going on within an organisation through focus groups. They are attempting to present this information to senior management in an attempt to get them to understand what staff are experiencing, to indicate that something different might need to be done....more...
I'm reluctant to post this. It's part of a pragmatic approach to figuring out where, as an Australian academic, I should try and target publications. It seeks to identify publications in the higher education and educational technology areas that would be "best"....more...
The following basically tells the rationale and approach used to create a (audio) podcast of the presentations from the Personal Learning Environments & Personal Learning Networks Online symposium on learning-centric technology....more...
This post is an attempt to capture some adhoc, over night thoughts about how the indicators project might move forward....more...
After at least a decade of "wouldn't it be a good idea if" and at least one aborted attempt (hint: an organisational restructure in which you are a loser, is not a great context for a new project with intra-organisational implications), the Indicators Project is getting started. This post is my attempt to define what the project means for me. What I hope to get out of the project, and what I hope others might get out of the project....more...
The aim of this post is to investigate the question of whether or not the learning pyramid (see following figure - click to expand) is true or false, or perhaps a hoax, myth, misdirection, useful model and/or theory based on verifiable research....more...
Dave Cormier has recently published a blog post titled Dave's wildly unscientific survey of technology use in Higher Education. There's a bunch of interesting stuff there. I especially like Dave's note on e-portfolios...more...
The following is a call for participation from folk interesting in writing a paper or two that will tell some real stories arising from LMS evaluations....more...
Sorry, but the purpose of this post is entirely selfish. My host institution has recently established a research center around learning, teaching and education. Given my background and interests, I'll be doing work under the auspices of the center and occasionally need to access the website (even though the website is implemented with CQU's home-grown content management system) of the center....more...
I've spent today trawling through various government websites trying to get a handle on the CRC program. Still much to read. Sometime soon will need to start talking with some folk. However, there does seem to be some important tasks to complete. The following is my first crack at such a list:...more...
In the next couple of weeks I'm going to be giving a presentation that will also serve as an experiment in alternate technologies for presentations. One of those technologies will be Votapedia.com - an Australian-based, free SMS/Web audience response system. This post is meant to capture the process I went through in learning about how to use Votapedia....more...
The following is a reflection on and response to a paper by Lisa Lane (2009) in First Monday titled "Insidious pedagogy: How course management systems impact teaching". I've been struggling with keeping up with reading, but this topics is closely connected to my thesis and the presentation I'll be giving soon....more...
This post stores information about an experiment/presentation seeking to examine alternatives for both the lecture and the LMS. Information available below includes:...more...
Two thesis related posts in a day, I must be on a roll. This post actually marks a milestone, the following rough bit of material is the last bit of original writing I'll need to do for chapter 2. What remains will be tidying up, fixing typos/spelling/grammar, "concludings" and some major cutting. Sadly chapter 2 currently stands at 200+ pages and will need some major cutting I think to be a reasonable size. That's a job for another day....more...
It's almost a month since the last post from the first draft of my thesis. So, after much time away here's the next installment. It's probably rougher than previous versions - which says something - I'm still getting back into the swing of things....more...
There's a bit of talk at my current institution about adopting "blended learning". The Vice Chancellor had this to say and various other folk have been pushing the idea. However, I do hear that there has been some disagreement about the exact definition of blended learning being used by various parties....more...
My focus for the last couple of weeks was a presentation - Herding cats and losing weight: How to improve learning and teaching. One description of the argument of that presentation is:...more...
As part of this project I'm looking at playing with "clickers" that work via the web, twitter, mobile phones or some other medium that removes the physical limitations of traditional devices (i.e. you have to be in the room with the lecturer)....more...