Category Archives: CMM

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 14

First published in Campus Morning Mail on Tuesday 16th November 2021

Professional Development Opportunities in Educational Technology and Education via Stephen Downes

Stephen Downes has been a go-to source for information and opinion about online learning for decades. He is also one of the originators of the idea of the MOOC. In this post, he shares a comprehensive Word doc list (147 pages) from Clayton R Wright of Ed Tech/Education conferences, seminars and workshops of note between now and 2024. (I did still manage to find one that isn’t on the list – that’s at the end of this column – but you had better believe it is comprehensive)

Teaching like a Master(Chef) – Using MasterChef as a model for effective and ineffective lesson design from Medium

Reality TV shows provide us with hours of content every week of ‘real’ people engaging in challenging practices right at the edge of their capability for our viewing pleasure. In some cases they are thrown into a task cold but more commonly they are supported in different ways that can offer us insights into wider learning and teaching practices. James Bullous explores (UK) Masterchef in this engaging post, ranging over Discovery learning, Cognitive Load Theory, feedback, modelling, motivation and more.

25 more real-world examples of Virtual Reality from E-Learning Provocateur

This post is a couple of years old now but given recent buzz about Augmented/Virtual Reality (AR/VR), it’s worth revisiting as a handy source of exemplars of innovative uses of the technology in education/training, healthcare, marketing, gameplay, ‘travel’ and storytelling.

Brain Implant Translates Paralyzed Man’s Thoughts Into Text With 94% Accuracy from Science Alert

Something that is a little further down the road from practical application in the classroom but nonetheless fascinating is this story that draws on an article from Nature. Researchers have been able to capture thought-to-text at a rate of ~18 words per minute with high accuracy. The mind boggles.

EdTechPosium 2021 – Canberra, Friday December 10th

EdTechPosium is a one-day conference with a practical bent covering innovative uses of educational technologies in ACT universities, TAFE and schools. Once known as MoodlePosium back when Canberra education institutions were collectively a Moodle shop, it is a great opportunity to connect with the dynamic local Technology Enhanced Learning community. Keynote speakers include chief Moodler Martin Dougiamas, ANU PVC Education & Digital Prof. Maryanne Dever, Ed Tech guru Natalie Denmeade and Astrophysicist Brad Tucker. For $90 including dinner, it’s hard to go wrong.

Ed Tech must reads – Column 11

First published Campus Morning Mail, Oct 26th 2021

Team-based quizzes on no budget from Amanda loves to audit

Australia’s favourite lecturer on auditing, Amanda White at UTS, integrates technologies into her teaching to inspire and engage her students. In this post, she shares her approach to creating weekly branching quizzes that are taken firstly individually and then in small groups to create opportunities for collaborative learning via multiple attempts. She discusses how she has created a solution that bypasses LMS quiz limitations but which retains accountability.

Support Designer-Teacher Collaboration in Educational Game Design Using Learning Science Principles from Ma and Harpstead, CHI-PLAY 2021 proceedings

A common concern held about educational technologies is that the tech is prioritised about the pedagogy. This work in progress from Ma and Harpstead (Carnegie Mellon University), presented recently at the Computer-Human Interaction in Play conference outlines their work on educational game design support frameworks linked closely to evidence based learning science principles. Given the potential of educational games to create rich, authentic learning experiences, this work shows great potential.

Vale Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi from Jane McGonigal (Twitter)

For people with an interest in learner engagement, motivation and productivity, the loss of Csikszentmihalyi last week was a sad moment. His 1990 book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience developed the idea of a ‘flow state’, the sweet spot between challenge and skill where people find themselves fully absorbed in an activity. This has been highly influential on education and game design and games in education. The comments below this tweet from McGonigal, an influential figure in serious game design thinking, offer a taste of the impact his work had.

UTS Video Meetup #10 Podcasting, Live-streaming and designing educational media Tues Oct 26, 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm (AEDT)

This video meetup this afternoon features academics and learning designers from a range of organisations presenting about using educational video (Mark Parry, AISNSW), live-streaming on Twitch (Jamie Chapman, UTAS), Learner generated digital media (Beverley Myles, OpenLearning) and podcasts as learning and teaching resources (Fidel Fernando, Macquarie Uni).

Towards a taxonomy of assessment types – webinar/workshop Thurs Oct 28th 12 noon (AEDT)

Hans Tilstra (Keypath Australia) leads what should be a lively set of activities intended to lead towards a meaningful taxonomy of assessment types in modern tertiary education. This is the final ASCILITE TELedvisors Network webinar for 2021 and caps off a stellar year of these events.

Ed Tech must reads – Column 9

First published Campus Morning Mail 12th October 2021

This Former English Prof Built and Sold a Company: Here’s What She Learned from Roostervane

One thing commonly discussed about education technology companies is how well they understand the experiences and needs of teachers and students. One thing commonly asked of academics is how applicable their skills and knowledge are to ‘the real world’. This quick read from Roostervane, a Higher Ed oriented careers site talks through some of the experiences of someone that moved from academia to ed tech and offers suggestions for those interested in this path.

Discussion on consistency in online course design from Neil Mosley (Twitter) 

Ideas of ‘academic freedom’ in terms of how courses should be designed and taught often butt heads with usability principles and institutional priorities when it comes to online learning. This debate is well captured in a tweet from @neilmosley5 and the subsequent string of responses that cover ground include standardisation of courses, Geocities, cognitive load, Pink Floyd’s The Wall, and some rather tortured analogies. Well worth a read to tour the many perspectives.

Student Guide to the Hidden Curriculum from the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education

Starting tertiary study can be a confusing experience for students, particular those who are first in family. There are labyrinthine systems to navigate and new terminology and concepts that are often treated as assumed knowledge. What is a PhD, a journal article, peer review? This guide, while UK-centric, offers clear and well-written explanations designed to support new students in this new world. I absolutely wish I’d had something similar when I started uni. (Thanks Thao for sharing)

Call for contributions – Innovation in Higher Education Assessment in COVID19 from JUTLP

The Journal of University Learning and Teaching Practice is an open publication hosted by the University of Wollongong. They are currently calling for contributions to an upcoming issue relating to innovation in assessment in the time of COVID19. Abstracts are due by Nov 1.

The Dreambank from University of California, Santa Cruz

Most of the time, hearing people recount their dreams can be a little tedious. They don’t fit conventional story structures and the details can be somewhat liminal. This site however, from psychology researchers at UCSC, captures brief (~100 words) retellings of more than 20,000 dreams from people aged between 7 and 74 over decades. It also includes discussions between the researchers and dreamers about the dreams. I spent way too long trawling through these one evening but it is a marvellous window into the minds of people we’d never otherwise hear.

Ed Tech must reads – Column 8

First published in Campus Morning Mail 5th October 2021

Go8 unis challenge anti-plagiarism software merger from Financial Review

While ‘text-matching’ or ‘similarity checking’ are probably more accurate terms for what tools like Turnitin and Ouriginal (formerly Urkund) do, they are the big two companies in the academic integrity / anti-plagiarism space. The announcement earlier this year that Turnitin planned to acquire Ouriginal raised some concerns in the sector about the impact that this may have on competition, support and innovation. The ACCC started an investigation in July and this article about the submission from the Group of Eight universities nicely sums up some of the issues.

Interaction in asynchronous discussion boards: a campus-wide analysis to better understand regular and substantive interaction from Education and Information Technologies Journal

Discussion forums have been a mainstay of online learning for as long as we have had online learning. Used well, they contribute to social, teaching and cognitive presence in a space that can sometimes be isolating. In spite of the time we have had to develop our use of forums as teaching tools, their efficacy varies wildly. This journal article from Gasell, Lowenthal, Uribe-Florez and Ching draws on the wealth of analytic data now available in the LMS to see how forums are used and whether there is an optimal level of teacher engagement. It’s largely quantitative but still offers some insights and suggestions for faculty development.

Some of the most iconic 9/11 news coverage is lost. Blame Adobe Flash from CNN Business

For a good few decades Adobe Flash dominated interactive multimedia content online. This was also true of many educational resources, and when support for Flash finally ended at the start of 2021 – the ‘Flashapocalypse’ – there was a significant body of work done in education institutions to ensure that resources were converted. Fortunately, the writing had been on the wall for some time. This CNN business article describes the impact on the wider web and particularly the strategies that have been used to preserve a wealth of rich online media that could be lost with the (virtual) flick of a switch.

Digital disruption in the time of COVID-19: Learning technologists’ accounts of institutional barriers to online learning, teaching and assessment in UK universities from International Journal of Academic Development (pre-print)

Learning (or education) technologists are most commonly professional staff responsible for supporting the effective use of technologies to enable better learning and teaching. They bridge IT departments and teaching centres, holding expertise in both spaces. Unsurprisingly, with the rapid pivot to technology enhanced learning since COVID19, they (we) have been busy helping institutions move to the ‘new normal’. This study from Watermeyer, Crick and Knight explores this shift through the eyes of these people on the ground and captures their insights into what has changed, whether this change will endure and why. It does not pull punches.

The meme is the message from Taraneh Azar

Part of Tim Berners-Lee’s vision for the world wide web was that it would be a home for creators as much as consumers. In some ways, memes as easily created, constantly evolving pieces of micro-content have realised that vision. Taraneh Azar is a student at Northeastern University that has built an incredibly rich resource outlining some of the history, theory, concepts and exemplars of memes and meme culture. It’s a rabbit hole but always interesting.

Ed Tech must reads – Column 7

First published in Campus Morning Mail 28th Sept 2021

How Dx Powers the Post-Pandemic Institution from Educause   

We started with UX (User Experience), moved on to LX (Learner Experience), and now the ed tech world is talking about Dx, which appears to stand for Digital Transformation. (Don’t ask me why). Meaningful change to learning and teaching involving technology requires an approach encompassing technology, pedagogy and institutional culture. In the absence of a large body of academic research or models relating to how these kinds of educational change projects work at scale, a lot of these kinds of projects lean on generic IT project management strategies. This post from Educause, and the rich resources that it links to, presents discussion and frameworks for undertaking Dx specifically in educational institutions.

Why captions are everywhere on TikTok: ‘Glasses for your ears’ from Los Angeles Times

With some reports indicating that people now spend more time watching videos on TikTok than YouTube, it’s worth keeping an eye on the ways that the format of video content on this platform is evolving. This article from the LA Times dives into the widespread use of text captions – both automatically and manually generated – to augment video content on TikTok for all users, for a variety of reasons. While educational institutions still largely use captioning for accessibility and research findings about the impact of them on learning is mixed, the fact that it is becoming commonplace for people to turn captions on for Netflix as we multitask while viewing shows suggests that more thought needs to be given to text in videos in education.

Why are hyperlinks blue? From dist://ed Mozilla blog

While they aren’t always blue and underlined, the default setting for a link to another page in HTML is resolutely underlined blue. In our years online, we have doubtless seen tens or hundreds of thousands of these links and seldom given this a thought – it is simply a convention of the web. This deep dive from the people at Mozilla (creators of the Firefox browser) travels back to the origins of hyperlinks in the 1960s and traces the design decisions that led us to this convention.

An OPM Debate: 11 Colleagues in 32 Tweets from Inside Higher Ed

Online Program Management (OPM) is a rapidly expanding sector in Higher Education that is not widely discussed. In a nutshell, they are businesses outsourced by institutions to provide services including learning design, course building and student recruitment, support and administration, among others, in the online course space. In Australia, this includes Kaplan, Keypath and OES. I recently came across this post from 2019 that summarises a Twitter discussion about OPMs between executives and academics in the US that still has some relevance. It crosses a range of issues including HE values, where innovation comes from, who pays for risk and how academia and industry see each other.

Stem Mixer from Courtney Barnett

Courtney Barnett is a big-name Melbourne indie-music darling with a new record coming out. She’s done something interesting to promote this, putting up a virtual mixing desk allowing fans to play with a new song (or an old one) by isolating different instruments, looping sections, and raising and lowering levels. Tools like this are great for teaching people how audio production works and creating opportunities to play while doing so.  

Ed Tech must reads – Column 6

First published in Campus Morning Mail 14th Sept 2021

The iceberg theory of EdTech: One Laptop Per Child from Gaurav Singh (Twitter) (5 mins)

The One Laptop Per Child initiative is a cautionary tale about what happens when well-meaning thought leaders with compelling pitches for ed tech don’t do due diligence and actually ask the people on the ground if their idea will work. OLPC was a project to manufacture and give robust, crank powered laptops to young learners in the Global South to help them eLearn out of poverty. This Twitter thread from @gauravsingh961 forensically works through the details of the failure of this project as a case study against the ‘tech as silver bullet’ mentality.

How Learning Technology Can Help from Education…technically (6 mins)

Rolling out a learning technology is only part of many when it comes to good digital education. The Scottish pivot to online learning in Higher Ed due to COVID19 was the focus of a recent government taskforce there, and Chris Kennedy discusses the vital support component of it in this blog post. While there was a sensible decision to lean heavily on JISC resources, he notes the virtual absence of input from expert professional support staff, subsequent proposed cuts in support to achieve efficiencies, and an expectation that educators will add a suite of digital learning capabilities to their quiver in their free time. In terms of understanding how some of the powers-that-be understand 21st century education, this post is eye opening.

How dark patterns trick you online video from Dark Patterns (7 mins)

User Interface/User Experience (UI/UX) has come into its own as a discipline in the last decade or so in helping us to understand how we use the web and how to design better and easier interactions. The shadow side of this – “Dark Patterns” – sees business and designers exploiting these principles to make users do things that they didn’t mean to using design tricks and cognitive science. This video explains some of these common tricks and the site overall offers some valuable tips to deepen our digital literacy.

“The end of Blackboard as a Standalone EdTech Company” from Phil on EdTech

While the title of this article veers toward the dramatic, the recent merger of the Blackboard LMS company and Anthology, a company with products on the student management, enrolment and retention side of things is kind of a big deal. This article walks through the details of this merger with somewhat of a business focus but it also discusses possible implications for particular platforms and institutional users. Given that Blackboard still has approximately a third of Australian LMS market, this is something useful to stay on top of.

Games for Change Asia Pacific Festival Oct 5th – Oct 7th

On a slightly more cheerful note, the expanded Games for Change festival is coming up in early October. This free online event offers more than 80 speakers talking about different ways serious games, game-based learning and other associated technologies are being used in tertiary education and beyond to help build a better world. It includes a mix of presentations and interactive workshops.

Ed Tech must reads – Column 5

First published in Campus Morning Mail 14th Sept 2021

Helpful tips for Hybrid teaching from Dr. Jenae Cohn (Twitter)

Hybrid or hyflex is one of those new modes of teaching that have seemingly materialised fully-formed in the last 18 months. It involves concurrently teaching face-to-face and online students, creating opportunities for them to learn and work together synchronously. This short thread from Dr. Jenae Cohn on Twitter offers some useful practical tips for teachers newly working in this space, including not referring to online participants as “people who are not here”.   

Australian Educational Podcasting Conference – October 6th and 7th

Audio offers an accessible and oftentimes more intimate way to connect with information. With lower technical barriers to entry for podcast creators than video, educators are embracing this format as a way to share and discuss ideas in a range of disciplines. The free Australian Educational Podcasting Conference returns on October 6th and 7th, with discussions about how people are using podcasts in teaching and practical workshops.

CAUDIT Higher Education Reference Models from CAUDIT

CAUDIT is the Council of Australasian University Directors of Information Technology. If you work at a member university, you can login to access a number of standard models that show how IT departments understand the many business and data aspects of a university ecosystem. At first glance this may seem a little niche, but for anyone with an interest in truly understanding how all the pieces fit together in a university, this is an invaluable resource.

The edX Aftermath from eLiterate

A couple of months ago, the open Harvard/MIT led MOOC platform edX announced that it was merging with the giant OPM (Online Program Management) business 2U. This represented a fairly significant swing to a more commercial orientation for a platform with lofty aims. Michael Feldstein from eLiterate has some strong feelings about this, in this informative article taking us through what has happened in the MOOC space since the big hype MOOC hype cycle of the early 2010s, and discussing what the next moves could and should be.

Is your smart fridge judging you? From Dan Hon (Twitter)

Finally, this amusing thread from @hondanhon on Twitter details some strange feedback he recently received from his Internet connected smart fridge.

Ed Tech must reads – Column 4

First published in Campus Morning Mail 7th Sept 2021

Facilitating online breakout groups from Dave Cormier

Good breakout group activities online are far less common that we might hope. Often students find themselves sitting quietly in a small Zoom room, unsure what to do, until one brave soul hazards a guess and starts the conversation. This 7 min YouTube video from the Office of Open Learning at the University of Windsor (Canada) offers some valuable ideas to ensure that the time spent in these sessions is productive and that help teachers track activity across all rooms at once. It is demonstrated in Blackboard Collaborate but the principles are universal.

The Australian Ed Tech directory from EduGrowth

This site provides links to more than a hundred Australian businesses working in education technology and adjacent spaces. It appears to be focused more on the business and investment side of things as there is an option to filter by sector and export market but not by the kinds of tools or services they provide. All the same, it is an interesting way to get an overview of how the market perceives the needs and priorities of the education sector.

Forget lone lecturers – pandemic shows teaching must be a team sport from Times Higher Education

Neil Mosley succinctly outlines the complexities of modern tertiary teaching practice, with ‘the new normal’, ever increasing accountability requirements, and a constantly evolving technology landscape making it hard for time poor educators to keep up. Institutions have skilled and experienced teaching and learning support teams ready to assist, yet many lecturers still choose to go it alone. Mosley explores why this might be and shares some new ways to resolve this. The article offers an informed, practical counter to some of the sadly ignorant takes on these support systems and professionals that we still see in the discourse far too often.   

Manifesto for teaching online webinar Tues 7th Sept from CRADLE

CRADLE at Deakin is one of the foremost research centres in Australia in the digital learning space, and the University of Edinburgh is also a heavy hitter. This webinar today brings them together, with Professor Sian Bayne discussing Edinburgh’s updated Manifesto for teaching online, which advocates for “strongly reseach-based, critical and creative practice” in modern teaching.

Tortured phrases in published research from @big_science_energy on TikTok

Plagiarism is as much a known problem in research as it is in learning and teaching, but the use of AI as a writing tool to bypass ‘traditional’ similarity matching systems is starting to result in some bizarrely humorous language in published papers. This quick TikTok video discusses a recent research paper about this phenomenon, which sees established terms like Artificial Intelligence morphing into ‘counterfeit consciousness’ instead. 

Ed tech must reads – column 3

Originally published in Campus Morning Mail 31st Aug 2021

Identifying, Evaluating, and Adopting New Teaching and Learning Technologies from Educause Review

The most common questions/complaints that I hear as an education technologist from academics wanting to use a new tool in their teaching revolve around the time it takes to add them to institutional systems. “But the nice salesperson told me that it only takes 30 mins to install – why has it been 6 weeks already?”  This article from Pat Reid draws back the curtain on many of the things that need to happen behind the scenes to ensure that an education technology is fit for purpose, supportable and will work with an institution’s many needs. It offers some useful insights into the practical realities that are frequently overlooked in most discussions of learning technologies.

Ranking Multiple-Choice Answers to Increase Cognition from The Effortful Educator

Multi-choice quizzes are a mainstay of online learning because they provide opportunities for learners to check their understanding of course material without the workload overhead to teachers of manually grading hundreds of responses. Legitimate concerns are raised though about whether MCQs test recall vs understanding and how authentic they are in relation to use of knowledge in practice. This post draws on research in the cognitive sciences to suggest an alternative approach to MCQs, asking students to explain why they think the options are right or wrong. There are clearly workload implications but it’s thought provoking.

Meet the man behind Tveeder, the no-frills live TV transcript that became an Australian media hero from The Guardian

Captioning and transcription of video for accessibility and also as a learning resource has come to the fore in recent years. Tveeder is a Melbourne based tool that aggregates the captioning feeds from Australian free-to-air TV in real time, for free. Given that many people parse text more quickly than video, and prefer to do so, this offers a handy resource for capturing relevant, real-world information that could be used in many teaching scenarios

Myth No More – Student Blackmailed by Cheating Provider from The Cheat Sheet

This email exchange between a student and a contract cheating service, shared by academic integrity newsletter The Cheat Sheet, highlights the real risks students choose.

Academics talk about The Chair – new podcast

The new Netflix series The Chair, a six episode dramedy about wheelings and dealings in an English department in a mid-level American university has unsurprisingly sparked much discussion in academia. Local Higher Ed notables Inger Mewburn, Narelle Lemon, Megan McPherson and Anitra Nottingham forensically and amusingly dissect the show episode by episode – definitely worth a listen.