Monthly Archives: January 2022

Ed Tech must reads – Column 19

First published in Campus Morning Mail, 25th Jan 2022

Vignette – Blogs for cogs from Lexi Keeton

While there is a lot of discussion about replicating face to face learning in the online environment, this misses the point that there are rich opportunities in this space to rethink education entirely. The Internet is a space where, for good or bad, everyone has a voice. Student work no longer needs to be read by a teacher and nobody else, it can be part of a bigger conversation – “learning into a megaphone” as Deakin Education student Lexi Keeton puts it in this insightful reflection on using blogs as part of her assessment. 

What does ‘academic freedom’ mean in practice? Why the Siouxsie Wiles and Shaun Hendy employment case matters from The Conversation

If you’ve been fortunate enough to miss it, online discourse around the pandemic in the last two years has been an utter cesspit. As with other areas of science, academics offering public commentary about COVID19 have found themselves abused and threatened. This article from Jack Heinemann discusses employers’ responsibilities and academic freedom through the lens of a recent employment case brought by two academics at the University of Auckland about whether their institution has failed in its duty of care to them.

Does digital education research have an integrity problem? from Neil Mosley

Research surrounding education in Higher Education sometimes occupies a strange liminal space. While it should ideally be objectively evidence based and geared towards ever better learning and teaching practice, it is often diminished by educators that perhaps don’t like what it has to say about their existing practice. This is doubly so when it comes to online and technology enhanced learning and teaching. As with most things though, it’s much more nuanced than this and Neil Mosley, a UK based digital learning designer steps through some of the complicating factors in this thoughtful piece.

Time to reboot and start the new semester from The Educationalist

Yes, it is still January and there are weeks to go until ‘normal’ semester 1 starts for many educators, but this list of bite-sized actions that you can fit around research and other responsibilities right now will serve you and your students well. Alexandra Mihai offers tangible steps to reflect and renew your upcoming course in this brief post, as well as links to many other valuable resources.

Discord Educational Toolkit from CUNY

Online communication between educators and students most commonly occurs via email, Zoom/Teams meetings and discussion forums in the LMS. For the most part, these are perfectly acceptable and get the job done. In the world outside the institution, you may find that your students connecting with their sub-communities in platforms like Discord, which was initial built for online gamers. Discord can see daunting at first, throwing around terms like ‘set up a server’ but it has come into its own as feature rich space for group communications. This in-depth resource from CUNY steps you through setting it up and using it effectively in teaching. Just be mindful that you probably won’t be able to get help from your institutional IT team if you have technical problems and you should probably also be mindful of institutional privacy and security policies.

Research update #62 – The importance of faculty/central

I haven’t posted one of these for a while but the work has been rolling along. In the last month I’ve written ~25k words of analysis on two questions (two big questions) in my pilot survey.

After all that, something hit me just now. I was writing about my surprise that academic developers and learning designers downplay project management activities and knowledge among education technologists, suggesting that they see this work more as reactive, 1:1 support focused. Now for me, knowing how involved big projects relating to implementation or analysis/evaluation of education technologies can be, this seemed to be a clear example of lacking awareness of what is happening in your backyard. (And there are big blind spots between all role types)

But these big projects are generally something that occurs in central teams, at an institutional level. Perhaps also among Ed Techs at more senior levels. If ADs and LDs are reflecting on what the ETs they interact with the most are doing (and knowing) on a daily basis, and these are the ETs in their faculties, it makes sense that they may have quite a different perspective.

In hindsight, this all seems painfully obvious but whoa.

Ed Tech must reads – column 18

First published in Campus Morning Mail on 18th Jan 2022

On Reading the Syllabus: A Pedagogical Thread from Twitter (@ec_leininger)

Academics often complain the students never read the unit outline, and from time to time a story will crop up about someone adding something quirky to get their students’ attention. Late last year a senior academic at the University of Tennessee posted a photo on Facebook of an unclaimed $50 note in a locker that he had included the code for in a boilerplate policy section about not making allowances for COVID. Better educators like Dr Liz Leininger were underwhelmed by this and shared this helpful thread about getting your students to read your syllabus by making it engaging and interactive instead.

Online Program Management Firms Are Thriving. And These Democrats Want Answers from The Chronicle of Higher Education

OPMs are third party providers that are increasingly partnering with Australian universities to build, deliver and administer their online course offerings. This article is American in focus so there are undoubtedly differences in systems and context but it does bring to light some questions that are being asked in the halls of power about these relationships.

We know why you hate online learning – and it has nothing to do with quality from Edugeek Journal

Nearly two years into the pandemic and we are hearing a growing chorus in some circles of people who are just tired of everything to do with online and remote learning and want to return to the old ways. These discussions are frequently wrapped up in rhetoric around the superiority of in-person teaching. Matt Croslin from EduGeek Journal dove into the research literature and spent a little time exploring the validity of these claims.

Learn programming in a codable music video from TikTok

This is a basic tool in some ways but I’m a sucker new interactive applications of coding and video in the service of better learning and teaching, so here we are. The latest music video from Doja Cat for her new song Woman allows people to change a number of variables coded in CSS, Javascript and Python at different points that change the appearance of things in the video. It’s a fun way to introducing programming structures and concepts to a new audience of learners. The joy of the person discussing it in this TikTok video is something that needed to be shared as well.

How to win at Wordle using linguistic theory from The Guardian

I recently saw Wordle described as the sourdough starter of the Omicron era – the new craze people are latching on to as a social distraction from the world. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a simple, free, one-a-day word puzzle with elements of the old Mastermind game. The addition of a simple share function that lets people show their success without spoiling the answer has led to an explosion of Twitter posts with grids of green, yellow and white squares. This article from David Shariatmadari explores some handy linguistic strategies for Wordle success.

Ed Tech must reads – column 17

First published in Campus Morning Mail Tuesday 7th Dec, 2021

Three Lenses on Lurking: Making Sense of Digital Silence from International Perspectives in Online Instruction (paywall)

The practice of reading the discussion in an online forum without engaging with it is sometimes referred to as ‘lurking’. I’ve never been a fan of this term as it casts a shadow on what can be perfectly reasonable behaviour. Kuhn et al essentially agree in this thoughtful chapter which examines lurking in online learning spaces – where ideally there is a greater need for students to be active participants. They offer some valuable nuance to the types of ‘lurker’ behaviour that offer opportunities to rethink how we create welcoming spaces for students.

Aussie gov takes on trolls from Vertical Hold: Behind the Tech news podcast

Given the current government’s track record in the technology/defamation space, it’s unsurprising that the recent announcement of plans to hold social media platforms more accountable for defamation on social media platforms have a few people wondering what the end game is. Monash Uni’s Emily van der Nagel shares her thoughts on these proposed changes relating to privacy, power and moves toward ‘banning anonymity’ (2:38 – 18:22)

Open/Technology in Education, Society and Scholarship Association Journal from OTESSA (open access)

This shiny new Canadian Open Access journal comes from OTESSA, an organisation formed “with the goal to provide an inviting community to drive innovation, research, and practice in areas where either technology or openness intersect with education, research, and, more broadly, within society.” The first edition covers topics ranging across video-conferencing technologies, online faculty development for effective graduate supervision, and Open Educational Resources in mathematics and learning communities.

50 Most Common WordPress Errors and How to Fix Them from Beginner’s guide for WordPress

WordPress has quickly become a ubiquitous platform for blogging and web publishing and it often fills the gaps when officially sanctioned institutional education technologies can’t quite do what educators want. Skimming through this handy list for troubleshooting WordPress for beginners, I recognised at least a dozen things that I could/should do to quickly fix my own site.

Dream app for easy AI art from Wombo

A few months ago, I shared some information about VQGAN+CLIP tools that let you use AI to generate art from basic text prompts. These are great but can be complicated, so it is little surprise that there are now simple apps that let you do this in a couple of clicks. The outputs don’t go through as many iterations as the full tools do and there is speculation that the company sells the ‘artworks’ as NFTs (the 21st century Tulip mania) but if that doesn’t bother you, it’s a fun tool that lets you download your images in seconds.