Concerns about the slow adoption of technology by teachers are not new, and rapid technological changes have increased the likelihood that teachers will have to grapple with unfamiliar technology. This presentation highlights for K-12 educators a framework of enablers for teachers to make sense of their experience with new and emerging technology. It is taken from the study, “Unfamiliar Technology and the Architect of Learning: A Case Study.” This framework outlines characteristics of internal affordance (teacher capacity), external affordances including dynamic professional development experiences, a collaborative culture of lifelong learning and inevitable constraints with something new. Constraints were not seen as barriers in opposition to the enablers. The study found limitations of time, infrastructure and opportunities for teacher learning challenged the teachers to engage with unfamiliar technology. The data also revealed a personal capacity to be open to the possibility that a new technology might present and a strong supportive ecosystem had a powerful impact in facilitating the process of sense making. A constructivist teaching and learning environment invited teachers as participants in the process of learning. As participants the teachers had the capacity to act within their environment, thus the weight of the constraints was diminished. The study also concluded that teachers who do not have the opportunity to see themselves as learners will find it more and more difficult to cope with the endlessly changing landscape influenced by educational technology. Teachers will benefit from participating in building personal pathways for making sense of new and emerging technology.
Of Interest to: K-12 educators, Researchers, Educational technologists, Administrators
As Canadian post-secondary institutions grapple with declining enrollments within the traditional student demographic, many are actively discussing the multi-faceted concepts of student engagement, support and persistence. The present study focused on female adult learners, a demographic that is growing at Canadian institutions and one that will become more critical as the traditional 18–25 age group shrinks as a proportion of post-secondary enrollment. This study examined the lived experience of seven adult female learners as they (re)engaged with post-secondary education at a mid-sized western Canadian university, using the metaphor of claiming one’s space and, through this, the building of campus community. The study provided an opportunity for students to express themselves in their own words over a 13 week period and permitted an in-depth examination of how they constructed their learning experiences and own identities. Using van Manen’s approach to phenomenological hermeneutics, the study emphasized the interpretive analysis of actual life texts, writing as research and the development of pedagogical competence. The results produced three main themes of motion, emotion and connection. The implications of these findings were discussed for students, educators and researchers, with strategies for supporting the transformative learning experiences, and the subsequent claim on cultural space, for female adult students within post-secondary settings.
Of Interest to: Post-secondary education, Researchers, Administrators
In November 2013 a new learning space, called the Discovery Centre, was opened in the MacOdrum Library at Carleton University, as part of the library’s renovations. This learning space was designed to provide a flexible environment with furnishings that allowed for easy reconfiguration, especially for group work. The 9,500 sq ft space included features such as large screen displays for easy switching between multiple laptop displays and treadmill desks. Besides the main open floor space there are three adjacent rooms, a gaming laboratory, a multi-media laboratory and a learning laboratory. The gaming lab has two gaming stations and two 3D printers. The multi-media lab has a large screen (approx. 18ft x 5ft). The learning lab provides an innovative classroom for 24 students (6 at 4 tables) that has an instructor’s screen projected onto two opposing walls, as well as a display at each of the four tables that allows 4 connections from laptops or tablets to the display screen. This presentation will examine the design and implementation of this new learning space, as well as the findings from running the space for six months. Details on the variety of uses of the space will be included. The presentation will be of interest to anyone involved in constructing and using learning spaces, including instructors, facilities managers, teaching and learning centres, administrators and librarians. The learning outcomes will be the knowledge of the furniture, technology and uses of a new learning space.
Of Interest to: K-12 educators, Researchers, Educational technologists, Administrators
This presentation will demonstrate an innovative, time-saving implementation for distance and open education online self-paced Spanish courses offered online by Athabasca University (AU) and delivered through Moodle. Spanish courses have always had very high enrollments, and their tutors have heavy workloads. As in any language course, an important amount of Spanish students’ learning takes place through the tutor marked written exercises (TMWEs). Traditionally, these assignments include many questions and sub-questions with variable answers, which meant they had to be graded manually. Previously, students were doing their TMWEs on paper or as Word files that went back and forth by post mail or by email, which made the grading work very laborious and repetitive. To overcome the bottleneck, we designed a new way to implement and automate the delivery and marking of Spanish courses in Moodle that eases the tutors’ marking burden by around 65 per cent. The time thus gained can now be used to guide students in other ways. Since question types in Moodle are somehow limited, we used Hot Potatoes to produce many other types of questions that can be imported and included into Moodle quizzes. This new method is being used successfully across all Spanish courses and now is being introduced to other language courses successfully. We are now enhancing and refining this successful method.
Of Interest to: Online and distance education, Post-secondary education, Instructional designers, Educational technologists
Video games are interactive by nature—people proceed in games by doing things, and this experiential quality lies at the very core of game design. Without interaction, it isn’t a game. Video games are popular precisely because of the experience—games designed for learning can do no less. However, to be feasible for use in formal educational settings, they must do more, and while we are making progress studying games in classrooms, there remain few structured approaches to analysing games that do not include classroom testing.
This presentation will outline the author’s Four Pillars of Game-Based Learning and show examples of how they can be used to perform a structured analysis of both COTS and serious games to assess whether or not a game has potential for use in the classroom.
These four pillars are:
Together these four pillars highlight the key issues associated with the use of games in the classroom.
Of Interest to: Online and distance education, Post-secondary education, K-12 educators, Instructional designers, Researchers, Educational technologists, Administrators
The Graduate Certificate in International Business (IB) builds on previous post-secondary education to give students the skills they need to enter an exciting career working with people and organizations globally.
Offered by the Donald School of Business at Red Deer College, this post baccalaureate credential is the first of its kind in the Alberta post-secondary community and has, at its core, a blended model of delivery that will support the students in their studies, offer them the latest in access to IB experts (face to face and online), while giving them the technology environment that will promote their ability to function in a global economy.
Santiago Iñiguez, the Dean of Madrid’s IE Business School, in November 2013, supported the use of blended learning in business education, noting “It’s high-quality online learning combined with face-to-face sessions...Blended education is the future” (Jacobs, 2013).
Intended for instructional designers and post-secondary administrators, the learning outcomes for this session include understanding the global environment opportunities for learning, the reasons why the design team chose a blended model of technology enhanced executive weekends combined with wholly online delivery, and how this model supports the future design and development of business schools in Canada.
Of Interest to: Online and distance education, Post-secondary education, Instructional designers, Educational technologists, Administrators
This session will look at the ways in which identifying and describing our students can or should influence the design of blended and/or online courses in a post-secondary environment. As institutions move to more student-centered pedagogical designs, the clearer articulation of who the student is impacts this process.
Learning Outcomes:
Audience: Anyone who is looking at designing and implementing blended and/or online courses or programs.
SMART™ discusses why student collaboration is more relevant than ever and how to seamlessly integrate in your digital environment.
In an increasing world of 1:1 digital learning what happens to real-time student collaboration? The digital classroom is growing at a faster pace than student enrolment: iPADs, cloud apps, smart phones, tablets, laptops, remote access, projection devices, interactive devices. Administering; class lists, class notes, opinion polling, formative assessments, whole class, small groups, collaborative and 1:1 learning …so much to deal with, so little time, so little training.
While one solution doesn’t fit all, and, we need to make-way for multiple technologies inside and outside the classroom; a good starting place is with an open-platform, a foundation that allows pedagogy to lead the way to student learning, not technology.
The AIM (Accelerative Integrated Method) is a gesture-supported language teaching methodology developed over the past ten years by B.C. educator Wendy Maxwell and now widely implemented throughout K-12 school boards throughout Canada and the U.S. Its outcomes-based approach coincides with the objectives of the Common European Framework of Reference for languages now being implemented in language teaching worldwide. The AIM is currently being piloted in a section of beginners’ French at TRU. This is the first use of the methodology at the post-secondary level in Canada.
In this workshop will begin with a brief demonstration of the teaching technique by giving a sample interactive lesson using a fictitious language so that attendees can experience the methodology first-hand as learners. We will view some of the AIM materials and discuss how the methodology was applied in a section of FREN 1000 at TRU in 2013. A brief review of existing research on the method will be provided, and successes and opportunities will be discussed. The session will conclude with an overview of a formal research project now underway through the TRU Teaching and Learning Scholars program to measure the efficacy of the AIM in the post-secondary classroom. Audience participation, questions, input and discussion are highly encouraged.
This presentation may be of interest to second-language teachers at both the K-12 and post-secondary levels. It may also interest instructional designers and researchers working on second language acquisition, adult learning and gesture-based learning.
Of Interest to: Post-secondary education, K-12 educators, Instructional designers, Researchers
My target audience is educators practicing in K-12 and perhaps university professors as well. The three concepts/ideas participants will walk away with include: skills necessary to teach online, tools necessary to teach online, pedagogy of online learning and discussion of asynchronous or synchronous delivery model.
Of Interest to: Online and distance education, Post-secondary education, K-12 educators
