Fortnightly Bulletin, 03 March 2014

ASCILITE NEWS

1. Call for EOI – Guidelines to Support and Advance Network Engagement for Members
2. New Co-Opted Executive Committee Member; Liz Coulter
3. Member Fee Increase Approved for July 2014

OTHER NEWS

1. OLT Conference 2014, June 2014
2. Digital Rural Futures Conference, June 2014
3. New contexts, New Media, New Questions for Teaching Research & Practice, UNE
4. Transforming Assessment Webinar, 5 March 2014
5. Tertiary eLearning Reference Group NZ (TeLRG) Report Available
6. altc2014 Conference, University of Warwick, UK
7. 7^th International Conference on Teaching and Learning in Higher Education
8. Full Time PhD Research Excellence Scholarship Available
9. EOI for Educator/Facility Manager, Royal Darwin Hospital Campus
10. ALT News Digest 293

ASCILITE NEWS

CALL FOR EOI – GUIDELINES TO SUPPORT AND ADVANCE NETWORK ENGAGEMENT

Expressions of interest (EOI) are called for individuals to develop Guidelines to Support and Advance Network Engagement for Members of Professional Associations and Networks.
These guidelines will be developed in response to the recommendations that came out of recent research conducted by ascilite to identify potential content that could/should go into a guide to support and advance network engagement for members of professional associations and networks in the digital age. The developed guidelines will:

1. Summarise research and evaluation findings about the use of social media for professional networking and engagement
2. Provide exemplars of how social media has been effectively used to facilitate professional networking and engagement.
3. Provide details on how professional organisations can get started using social media to facilitate professional networking and engagement.
4. Detail design principles for professional organisations to adopt to support and advance network engagement among their members

The guidelines will be openly accessible via a web-based publication and disseminated through NATA partners and ascilite communication channels.
The appointment of Guidelines author(s) will be on a contract basis with remuneration of $5K for the development and desktop publishing of the publication. Conditions of Engagement (COE) will be formally negotiated including timeframes and deliverables and the deadline for the final publication of the Guide will be August 2014.
Written EOIs (maximum of 2 pages) must provide evidence (bullet points are acceptable) of the following:

• Resource/publication development.
• Strong writing skills.
• Understanding of the higher education sector.
• Understanding of educational technologies and strategies for community engagement desirable.

The information above and a template for your EOI is available in PDF format here.  
 
The deadline for EOIs is COB Monday 24 March 2014. For further enquiries, please contact Dominique Parrish on 0242215492 or by email OR Elizabeth Greener on 0402399518 or 07 31385663 or by email.

If you are not able to meet the deadline but would like to be considered for this initiative please contact Dominique OR Elizabeth.

NEW CO-OPTED EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE MEMBER LIZ COULTER

 
Ascilite is pleased to announce that Elizabeth Coulter, Director IT Services, Information Technology Services at The University of Auckland has been co-opted to the Executive Committee for the remainder of 2014 to assist with the redevelopment of ascilite’s I.T.infrastructure. 
 
Liz’s extensive experience in I.T. will serve as a valuable resource to ensure that the upgrading of ascilite’s entire website, subscription system and social media/professional networking apps will meet the needs of ascilite members for years to come. 
 
Liz will also be advising on the I.T. requirements of ascilite conferences and AJET as we move to streamline these services as well.

MEMBER FEE INCREASE APPROVED FOR JULY 2014

A modest member fee increase from July 2014 was approved at the Annual General Meeting conducted at the 2013 ascilite Conference.
The reason for the increase is twofold: firstly, the Society has not increased fees for over 6 years; and secondly, the Society is anticipating a significant loss in 2104 due to development of a new website and I.T. infrastructure and increases in on-going costs related to AJET.
Fee increases were set to 10% and then rounded and you can view the new fees here. A similar increase will apply to institutional memberships.
If you would like to take advantage of the current fees before the increase on 1 July 2014, you may renew your membership at anytime provided you have received at least one automated renewal notice.. The system generates three renewal notices prior to your renewal date.  The first is sent three months beforehand so you can only renew three months ahead.
 

OTHER NEWS

OLT CONFERENCE 2014

The Office for Learning and Teaching (OLT) invites you to save the date for our inaugural national conference being held in Sydney on 10-11 June 2014.

Theme

The themes of the conference will centre on transformative innovation and change in higher education, and the impact technological developments are having on learning and teaching. It will also showcase the related priority work being undertaken through OLT grants and commissioned projects in 2013 and 2014.

When

10-11 June 2014 (Day 1: 9am-5pm, Day 2: 8:30am-3:30pm)

Where

Dockside Pavilion, Darling Harbour Sydney NSW 2000

Further information

Further information will be on the OLT website as details become available.   You can also phone the Events Team on 02 6240 0625 or by email.

DIGITAL RURAL FUTURES CONFERENCE, JUNE 2014

The Digital Rural Futures Conference will be hosted by ADFI (Australian Digital Furuttres Institute) at the University of Southern Queensland’s Toowoomba campus from the 25 – 27 June, 2014. The conference has three themes, Regional Futures, Agricultural Futures and Digital Futures and we feel that it may be of interest to ascilite members. You will find a short summary below and information is also available on the  DRFConference Website.

Summary  

The conference aims to bring together researchers, representatives from regional business, industry and agriculture and community and educational practitioners to explore three themes: Regional Futures, Agricultural Futures and Digital Futures. There will be three keynote and three invited speakers plus parallel sessions for each of the themes.
 
The three keynotes:

• Digital Futures: Professor John Traxler, the world’s first Professor of Mobile Learning. Based at the University of Wolverhampton in the UK, Professor Traxler has done much work to help develop and evaluate mobile learning as well as better understand it in developing world contexts.
• Regional Futures: Dr Wendy Craik AM, Commissioner of the Productivity Commission. Dr Craik is currently overseeing a public inquiry into future options for childcare and early childhood learning in Australia.
• Agricultural Futures: Neil Gardyne  and his 13 year old son Mark. Neil runs a large farm in New Zealand and is highly innovative in his approach to farm management. Mark has designed an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle  (sometimes referred to as a drone), which allows his father to keep surveillance on 10,000 stock units of sheep and cattle.

Abstracts for the conference were due on 28 February 2014 and will be peer reviewed.

The program includes optional tours to either a smart farm, astronomical observatory or Toowoomba’s new regional airport.

Further details including how to register are available on the conference website. You can also follow the conference on Twitter @DRFC2014 and make enquiries at DRFConference@usq.edu.au

NEW CONTEXTS, NEW MEDIA, NEW QUESTIONS FOR TEACHING, RESEARCH & PRACTICE, UNE

Connecting to the future is a multi-site and multi-modal colloquium that will be distributed through the University of New England's FutureCampus at Parramatta. The event will take place over two days on 15 – 16 May 2014.

Who should attend?

Connecting to the Future is for anyone with an interest in developing their scholarship of teaching and learning to meet the future in higher education. The colloquium will be especially focused on questions raised by tertiary teachers researching their teaching, new teachers, teachers teaching new students, and those looking to teach in new ways.

The focus will be on researching and teaching for future connections in the disciplines, both at the local level and with a view to national and global trends. This event will have a particular, but not exclusive, eye on the challenges and opportunities posed by new media.

The colloquium will be a forum for academic staff wishing to obtain and to share recognition for teaching and learning in their discipline, whether through publication, or through refining their research ideas for institutional and National awards and grants program applications.
Sessions

Sessions include papers/presentations, collaborative and interactive sessions and workshops. Details of the sessions and the session themes are provided on the Colloquium website.

Contributions

Are now invited for papers/presentations and interactive sessions. Submit your abstract via the colloquium website.  Further information is available by email.
 
Connecting to the Future is a joint initiative of the PVCII and the Learning Innovations Hub at the University of New England.

TRANSFORMING ASSESSMENT WEBINAR, 5 MARCH 2014

The next Transforming Assessment webinar, titled "Badges for Learning: a review of the formative role of badges in two open online courses" will be conducted on 5 March 2014.  The webinar will be presented by Simon Cross, Open University, UK.
 
The emergence of open online learning courses brings in to sharp relief the viability of existing forms of teacher provided formative and summative assessment. For such courses that carry no charge for participation alternative structures for engaging, motivating and sustaining study need to be sought. Badges or similar such visual public symbols that communicate to others a particular quality, achievement or affiliation possessed by the owner may have a role to play.
 
This session will cover some potential social and psychological roles for badges and then report on the reception and use of badges in two 'massive' open online courses delivered in 2013. This will highlight the varied functions badges performed with particular attention to how they may support and guide learning in a 'formative' capacity during a course and the need for effective pedagogic design and alignment of the course badging strategy. This discussion will draw upon data from end of courses surveys that specifically asked about badges, pre-course surveys, and user comments made during the course such as on Twitter.
 
The webinar host is Professor Geoffrey Crisp (RMIT University, Australia) and Dr Mathew Hillier (Teaching and Educational Development Institute, University of Queensland, Australia).
 
Starting GMT 07:00AM (Duration approx 1 hour). See your equivalent local time at http://timeanddate.com/s/2hw9
 
Further information and RSVP instructions are at http://bit.ly/webinar5march2014

TERTIARY eLEARNING REFERENCE GROUP NZ (TeLRG) REPORT AVAILABLE

TeLRG recently released its extramural report which should be of interest to ascilite members who wish to be informed about critical aspects of distance education. The report covers retention rates in extra mural (eLearning ) courses in NZ. 
 
You may view the report here.
 
Peter Guiney
Analyst, Tertiary Systems Performannce and Analysis
Ministry of Education
Vogel Centre, 8 Aitken Street, Wellington, New Zealand
DDI (04) 463 7557
http://www.minedu.govt.nz

altc2014 CONFERENCE, UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK, UK

The 21st annual conference of the Association for Learning Technology – Riding Giants: How to innovate and educate ahead of the wave, will be held from 1 to 3 September 2014 at the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom.
 
The conference will bring together evidence, theory, success stories and critical thinking from across education around five key themes:

• Predicting Giants: What are our now and forthcoming big questions, big challenges, and big changes?
• Learning to ride: We do not learn on giants but are looking for examples from schools, colleges, universities and other education providers where collaboration and knowledge exchange are successfully used to innovate and educate. In some cases the learning may involve falling off and getting wet.
• Evidence on board: How do we move on from being a (virtually) lone rider? Collaborating and collecting evidence at scale (within or between institutions), analysing it and critically assessing the analysis are needed in order to fill the largely missing middle between(research) experiments and full scale deployment.
• Staying up, mobile and personal: Learning and Learner Technology have the potential to engage, enable and disrupt. How is digital technology changing the journey and what coping strategies do we have?
• All agog: Results that show that we can ride large waves and possibly giants: emerging technology and teaching practice in significant action.

Conference co-chairs are Sarah Cornelius, Linda Creanor and Joe Wilson
 
ALT has recently issued 3 calls for the 2014 conference, these are summarised below and available in full at the links.

1. Joint call to join the altc2014 Programme Committee and Online Conference Coordinators group

If you are a member of ALT, or affiliated with an institutional member or sister body of ALT, we would like to encourage you to apply to become a member of the Programme Committee for this conference. We are also looking to recruit up to 6 online conference coordinators who will help to deliver the conference online and support social media channels.    View the full call at http://go.alt.ac.uk/1gK3ak8 and express an interest at http://go.alt.ac.uk/1ct8KpC.  The deadline for expressions of interest is 24 March 2014

2. Call and guidelines for submission of abstracts to altc2014

We invite the submission of abstracts for sessions of the following types:

• Standard presentations (15 minutes).  These will normally take the form of a 10 minute presentation followed by 5 minutes for questions.
• Extended presentations (30 minutes). These will normally involve some audience participation such as in a traditional demonstration session.
• Long presentations (60 minutes).  These may follow a variety of formats. We are especially interested in innovative and creative sessions.

View the full call and guidelines at http://go.alt.ac.uk/1na0fBf and submit an abstract via http://go.alt.ac.uk/1b1IZyn.  The deadline for submissions is 31 March 2014

3. Call for Papers for a Special Issue of Research in Learning Technology

All accepted papers will be published as a Special Issue of Research in Learning Technology, ³Riding giants: how to innovate and educate ahead of the wave: Research Proceedings of altc2014².
 
Research from across education sectors, industry and other disciplines will be welcome, including research focusing on work-based and community learning. We are particularly seeking to encourage submissions from early career researchers and doctoral students from across all related disciplines.
 
View the full call at http://go.alt.ac.uk/1hi8Ikz and submit a proposal at  http://go.alt.ac.uk/1jLbos0.  The deadline for submissions is 31 March 2014

More information about the 2014 Conference is at https://www.alt.ac.uk/alt-conference/altc2014

7TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON TEACHING & LEARNING IN HIGHER EDUCATION (TLHE 2014)

The Centre for Development of Teaching and Learning (CDTL) at the National University of Singapore will be organising the 7^th International Conference on Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (TLHE 2014) from 9  – 11 December 2014.  The theme for this year’s conference is Innovation in educational approaches: theory, practice and research.

Call for extended abstracts is open till 1 May 2014. More information about the conference can be found on the website.

FULL TIME PhD RESEARCH EXCELLENCE SCHOLARSHIP AVAILABLE

A full-time PhD Macquarie University Research Excellence Scholarship (MQRES) is available in the Department of Education associated with successful ARC Discovery Project DP140100970.

Project Name: Designing effective learning experiences: Investigating novice and expert teachers’ design processes

Primary school teachers are responsible for designing learning experiences for their students in an increasingly complex environment. This project will advance understanding by: characterising and identifying differences in how novice and expert teachers approach the design of learning experiences for their students; capturing expert design processes through practice examples; and investigating how expert practice examples stimulate novice teachers to design learning experiences. This new understanding of teachers' design processes is necessary if we are to enhance teacher preparation and continued professional learning.

We would like to attract a PhD student who is interested in researching teacher thinking and practices.  The successful candidate will join with an established collaborative research team including Lori Lockyer, Sue Bennett and Shirley Agostinho.

Interested prospective candidates should contact Prof Lori Lockyer (lori.lockyer@mq.edu.au) or Phone: 02 9850 9816 for further information and to discuss possible research directions within this project, and before submitting an application form.  More information is available on the website and refer to  scholarship allocation number 2014069

EXPRESSION OF INTEREST FOR EDUCATOR/FACILITY MANAGER, ROYAL DARWIN HOSPITAL CAMPUS, FLINDERS NT

Fixed Term contract to 31^st December 2014 (in the first instance).

Flinders NT seeks expressions of interest for it’s SLE (Simulated Learning Environment) from a suitably qualified person with experience in the delivery and design of learning experiences preferably in simulated environments. This is an Academic level B fixed term, part time to full time by negotiation position  until 31^st December 2014 (in the first instance – subject to contract extension).

Role & Key Responsibilities

The Educator/Facility Manager’s main responsibility is to manage the day-to-day operations of the NT Simulated Learning Environment and to lead teaching, development, research and community engagement activities in the facility. You will work with the Simulation Technician and other Flinders NTMP staff in the educational planning and integration of simulation into the curriculum, as well as working with clinicians and external users in delivering training to qualified health professionals.
 
You will bring your own experience and educational expertise to the facility in order to create an environment where learning is exciting and multi-faceted. You will work closely with other simulation centres and health professionals across the NT. You will also lead community engagement activities to build the reach of the NT SLE through collaborative partnerships with other organisations responsible for the training of health professionals in the NT. You will also be required to undertake administrative duties related to the position.

Terms of the Role

The terms of the position are Fixed Term contract to 31 December 2014 (in the first instance) at part-time to full time by negotiation basis until 31 December 2014 (in the first instance).  A base salary range of $82,404 to $97,852 FTE (Full Time Equivalent) – starting band will be negotiated commensurate with the experience of the applicant.  In addition to the base salary Flinders University offers NT District Allowance, SGC Superannuation, 6 weeks annual leave (pro rata for each completed month of service).
The position is based at Royal Darwin Hospital (1^st Floor, Yellow Wing, Building 4)

Contact

Please contact Helen Wozniak Helen.Wozniak@flinders.edu.au or call (08) 8946 7560 if you are interested in this position and to receive a detailed position description.

ALT News Digest 293

Association for Learning Technology Fortnightly News Digest 293 was issued on 21 February 2014.  ALT's journal – Research in Learning Technology is open access. Articles from the past 20 years are available here.