Dr Stephen Marshall
Victoria University of Wellington (NZ)
Presentation

Dr Stephen Marshall is Acting Director and Senior Lecturer in Educational Technology at the VUW Teaching Development Centre. Stephen is a member of the New Zealand Ministry of Education Tertiary E-Learning Reference Group and Chair of the E-Learning Directors of the New Zealand Universities Group. Stephen researches in the areas of e-learning benchmarking, plagiarism and academic integrity, intellectual property and the of development of policy and strategy to support and encourage the effective use of technology.

eLearning Maturity

The E-Learning Maturity Model (eMM) provides a means by which institutions can assess their capability to sustainably develop, deploy and support e-learning. The eMM assesses capability in a number of processes that have been selected through a combination of research and consultation with groups internationally. The eMM has been successfully applied in a number of international contexts to validate the model and help determine institutional and sector e-learning capability and priorities for future investment.

Tools like the eMM have the potential to guide changes at the macro level, decisions and investment of resources that affect many processes of one or more institutions in a systematic manner. However, the eMM would be of little value as a tool for informing investment and strategic planning for e-learning if it was found to be biased by contextual factors that are not amenable to change by institutions or funding bodies. In this paper a recent sector wide capability assessment exercise is analysed for evidence that the eMM is in fact measuring a real and meaningful institutional e-learning capability amenable to improvement.

Jenne von Pein - eFest 2008 Gold Sponsor
Yellow Edge (NZ)
Workshop

Use of Elluminate virtual meeting and teaching rooms - more detail available soon.

William S. Demchick; Paul H. Demchick (speaking)
Massey University; UCOL (NZ)
Presentation

Most of Paul's career has been as a professor of biological and physical sciences. Over the years, he has developed a range of PC applications for his students' use. Mobile phone applications are something new for him. His early PC applications now make him cringe. He plans to cringe over these mobile phone applications in years to come.

Mobile Phone Applications for Students of Non-Geek Lectures

Our project was to create templates which would allow educators who might not have the knowledge or desire to write applications, to create the subject content for custom mobile phone applications which are intended for use by their students. Participants with JAVA enabled phones will be able to download a sample application during the presentation and experience the general formats we have developed.

The presentation will include an explanation of how we have attempted to create flexible formats and enable efficient development of course-specific material. The approach that will be presented was tested with a UCOL veterinary nursing cell biology paper. However, a major goal of the project was to create structures in which other class-specific content can readily be substituted for the content used in the test. The approach of a downloadable application was very economical for the students because a one-time (and typically inexpensive) download was all that was required. The things that have worked well, and the things that did not, will be presented.

Terry Neal
Blended Solutions (NZ)
Presentation

Terry Neal has led several national e-learning projects and worked with many ITPs across New Zealand. Recently, Terry has worked for TEC to lead a national assessment of e-learning capability of 19 ITPs and investigate international examples of collaboration for flexible learning. She is also working on a project to share knowledge developed from the Ministry of Education’s e-learning research.

Institutions working together for flexible learning: Lessons learned from international examples

In this session, Terry will share some lessons learned from her TEC funded investigation of 22 examples of institutions working together for flexible learning. The session links to the theme of Connected Oganisations. The session will include discussion of how these lessons could be applied in New Zealand.

Goals: Attendees at this session will understand why and how others internationally are working together for flexible learning. They will also understand factors which contribute to the success of collaborations and issues to consider. Attendees will be able to reflect on what this might mean in their own context.

Melanie Brown, Donna Nicholson
Wintec (NZ)
Presentation

Melanie is an Instructional Designer at Wintec. She holds a Master of Arts with honours, and a Postgraduate Diploma in Second Language Teaching with distinction from Waikato University. She has worked on projects internationally for general English, business English, hospitality, business, foundation study skills and beauty and spa therapy.

Donna Nicholson is a senior beauty therapist and a member of the ITPNZ Executive Committee for Beauty Therapy and Hairdressing. She has many years experience as a beauty therapist and is the Programme Manager for the Diploma of Beauty and Spa Therapies at Wintec.

Beauty and Blended Learning: E-learning in Vocational Programmes

This study set out to discover how the provision of blended learning, focussing on course essential vocabulary, affected students in a module of Diploma of Beauty and Spa Therapies at Wintec in Hamilton New Zealand. The results were surprising. The module chosen for this study, Electrolysis and Electrical Therapies is one of the most complex, vocabulary rich modules in the diploma. The programme manager described students who choose to study beauty therapy as practically minded. She explained that these students often struggle with the complicated physical and chemical theory they are required to understand.

I designed and developed an online course specifically aimed at supporting the learning of complex vocabulary and concepts. This online course ran alongside the face-to-face lessons from a specialist beauty therapist, work experience placements and practical sessions where students perform treatments on clients.

The response from students, tutor and programme manager in surveys and interviews showed that the tools created were appreciated because they allowed more flexibility and highlighted the connections between the various components of the course. However, there were also some puzzling results. Does providing resources, online, in print and in practical lessons actually mean students will use these resources and learn from them?