David Sturrock, Rachel Pringle and others
NMIT, TANZ (NZ)
Panel presentation

David Sturrock is the Flexible Learning Team Leader from NMIT. Rachel Pringle is the eLearning Designer, Web Developer and Moodle Administrator for TANZ. Other presenters will be named closer to the conference but will include teacher and administration roles.

A lesson in herding cats: the TANZ networked NZ Diploma in Business Project

A presentation with a range of project participants describing the background, goals and experiences in the TANZ NZ Diploma in Business project. This project utilises the networking capability of Moodle to support distributed recruitment and delivery of 6 courses within the NZ Diploma in Business. Each member of TANZ has taken responsibility for teaching just 1 course, which may have students from up to 6 different ITP's participating. Students login to their local institutions' Moodle site and seamlessly transfer to the myLearn site to participate in their study.

Update: Presentation slides - PPT & PDF

Thomas Cochrane & Roger Bateman
Unitec (NZ)
Presentation

Thom is an Academic Adivsor (elearning and Learning Technologies) with Unitec (March 2004 to present). His role at Unitec includes providing support for elearning and learning technologies for Unitec teaching staff, and pushing the boundaries of educational technology for enhancing teaching and learning at Unitec. His research interests include mobile learning, web2.0, and communities of practice. He is currently implementing mobile learning trials for his PHD thesis: "Mobilizing Learning: The potential impact of wireless mobile computing on teaching and learning in higher education in New Zealand".

Roger was Born and educated in the UK, completing a BA (hons) in Furniture and Product Design at Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication in 1987 and MA in Furniture Design at the Royal College of Art, London in 1989. He is ex founding partner of International furniture company RDS in London. Roger has lived and worked in the UK, Spain and now is located in Auckland New Zealand where he is Associate Head of Design at Unitec, final year tutor on the Product Design Degree and Master supervisor. He is also director of the creative industries business incubator called The Generator and involved in MayDE a Unitec School of design joint venture design research center based in Guangzhou, China. Roger's professional design practice focuses on design products, branding, and design management. He has interested in sustainable design and inclusive design.

Engaging students with mobile web 2.0

Connected Learners: Blogs, wikis, podcasting, and a host of free, easy to use web2.0 social software provide opportunities for creating social constructivist learning environments focusing upon student-centred learning and end-user content creation and sharing. Building on this foundation, mobile web2.0 has emerged as a viable teaching and learning environment, particularly with the advent of the iPhone (Nicknamed "the Jesus phone") and iPod Touch. Today's wifi enabled smartphones provide a ubiquitous connection to mobile web2.0 social software and the ability to view, create, edit and upload user generated web2.0 content.

This presentation outlines how mobile web 2.0 technologies can be harnessed to enhance and engage students in a social constructivist learning environment. It is based on the experiences of 7 different Mobile Learning trials implemented at Unitec over the last 3 years. Examples of student and teaching staff feedback will be drawn from several of these mobile learning trials. Additionally the presentation will involve mobile web2.0 demonstrations and facilitate a discussion around the practicalities and potential of integrating and supporting mobile web 2.0 within a tertiary course.

Roger will provide a course tutor's experiences of one of the mobile web2 trials and it is hoped the insights gained will be useful for other academic staff, and for professional development staff seeking to integrate innovative educational technology into their pedagogies.

Peter Bruce
Northtec (NZ)
Presentation

Peter Bruce has taught at NorthTec for over twenty years. He began teaching horticulture and later moved to business. Peter was an early adopter of web technologies and has used Moodle since its introduction at NorthTec. Peter is currently 0.5 tenured at NorthTec. He also is a director of Clicks Online Course Developers and has developed and reviewed a range of courses. Peter's work in the NZDipBus Leadership paper, including the use of assessed forums, was recognised by the Innovation Award at NorthTec in 2008.

Building Online Student Communities with Assessed Forums

Online learning can be a rich social experience and enhance learning for students. It can further add value by increasing the flexibility of their access to education. This flexibility provides for a better fit for busy lives. Experience at the institution has revealed that assessed forums are an essential component of online or blended delivery. Students derive many benefits from forum participation including enhanced peer learning, tighter feedback loops, smaller assessment chunks, improved time management, and an enriched social experience. Forums also encourage students to read the text earlier in the semester and enable the use of stories for learning. Forums used as a component of blended delivery can reduce class time while maintaining learning interaction.

This presentation is mostly relevant to the theme of connected learners. My use of assessed forums over four years has created a consistently rich learning experience for students through connecting to other learners.

Alan Muxlow
Open Polytechnic (NZ)
Presentation

Alan Muxlow is the Registered Quantity Surveyor Programme Leader in the Quantity Surveying & Construction Management Engineering & Construction Centre of the Open Polytechnic

An E-learning Portal for Construction Studies Resources

This presentation is the result of being involved in the NZ Tertiary Education Commission Innovation Development funded NZOER Project. This project was for the development of three on-line learning unit standards for existing Construction National Diploma qualifications. Such development required them to be viewed as a generic resource suitable for both online learning and easily printed out as a paper-based resource to support face-to-face teaching. Easy access to and expansion of such resources in a more supportive framework is the obvious next step and such a proposal is the basis of this presentation.

'Shared Resources', 'Portals of Learning', 'E-learn Focus' 'Fast Changing Technical Data', 'Benchmarking & Best Practice', 'Information Overload' - these are all scenarios we are being bombarded with everyday. This presentation focuses on providing a resource to meet all of the above needs to support and enhance the New Zealand teaching environment for construction technician national diploma qualifications for Architectural Technology, Construction Management and Quantity Surveying. The proposal is to set up a Construction Specific Learning Portal that contains a variety of approved and vetted resources focused on the unit standard content for the sectors qualifications. Such content would be freely available to all accredited teaching polytechnics, include only current technically accurate data that set standards of best practice. It would be prepared for the use of teaching construction related unit standards on the expectation that it be enhanced by the polytechnic lecturer. The initial access screen would be presented through a virtual builder's office layout with all cabinets, files, telephone, computer and e-mail links all which contain a variety of data. The data would be set up in a way that would be commonly stored by the construction industry but linked to the different unit standards content covered in the qualifications.

The presentation would show the entry screen, set up as a 'Virtual office', and present numerous examples of types of data that could be held in such a portal and accessed through this screen. Feedback and discussion with the audience would focus on:

1. Parties involved in the development
2. Financing including commercial support and input
3. Suitability/real use for the face-to-face lecturer
4. Other useful data and links to include
5. Portal & intellectual property ownership, gatekeeper and currency of content

Stephen Downes
Institute for Information Technology's e-Learning Research Group (Canada)
Presentation, remote

Stephen Downes (born April 6, 1959) is a designer and theorist in the fields of online learning and new media.  Born in Montreal (Quebec, Canada) Downes lived and worked across Canada before joining the National Research Council of Canada as a senior researcher in November 2001. Currently based in Moncton, New Brunswick, at the Institute for Information Technology's e-Learning Research Group, Stephen has become a leading voice in the areas of learning objects and metadata as well as the emerging fields of weblogs in education and content syndication. Downes is widely accepted as the central authority for online education in the edublogging community. He is also widely accepted as the originator of ELearning 2.0. Downes was the winner of the Individual Blog award in 2005 for his blog OLDaily (see below). Downes is Editor at Large of the International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning.

Information on Stephen’s session coming soon, but it will include information on the "Connectivism and Connected Knowledge Online Course" being facilitated by Stephen and George Siemens.

MOOC & Mookies: the Connectivism & Connective Knowledge Online Course

Starting in August, 2008, George Siemens and Stephen Downes will be offering an online course, "Connectivism and Connective Knowledge," through the University of Manitoba. Consistent with their philosophy of open learning, the course will not only be offered for credit through the University, but will also be free and open to all on the internet. At last count, 1200 people have signed up for the course, leading to its designation as a 'Massive Online Open Course,' or MOOC. In this session we will describe the course, outlining not only the content but also describing the organization and technology being used to facilitate such a large number of learners.

Update: Presentation slides