Can a media annotation tool enhance online engagement with learning? A multi-case work-in-progress report

The paper explores preliminary data of four cases in a larger study investigating the effects on learning of a new educational technology called Media Annotation Tool (MAT). In particular, the paper focuses on learning engagement with MAT and begins to raise questions about what factors promote or enhance engagement. Drawing on the work of Kirkwood (2009), the authors analyse the type of educational technology functions that were expressed through the ways teachers integrated the use of MAT into their curriculum. Another factor explored in the paper is student engagement. Barkley's (2010) theorising on the complexity of student engagement for learning argues that engagement is where motivation and active learning synergistically interact. Examining students reflections on their use of MAT, the authors identify that while MAT offers active learning, motivation for the use of MAT may be a missing factor for some disengaged students. This insight provides further themes to explore in further analysis of the projects data.

Teaching critical reflection: a tool for transformative learning in social work?

In an Australian Bachelor of Social Work degree, critical reflection is a process explicitly taught in a fourth year subject to students who have returned from their first field placement experience in agencies delivering social work programmes. The purpose of teaching critical reflection is to enable social work students to become autonomous and critical thinkers who can reflect on society, the role of social work and social work practices. The way critical reflection is taught in this fourth year social work unit relates closely to the aims of transformative learning. Transformative learning aims to assist students to become autonomous thinkers. Specifically, the critical reflection process taught in this subject aims to assist students to recognise their own and other people's frames of reference, to identify the dominant discourses circulating in making sense of their experience, to problematise their taken-for -granted ‘lived experience’, to reconceptualise identity categories, disrupt assumed causal relations and to reflect on how power relations are operating. Critical reflection often draws on many theoretical frameworks to enable the recognition of current modes of thinking and doing. In this paper, we will draw primarily on how post-structural theories, specifically Foucault's theorising, disrupt several taken-for-granted concepts in social work.

The challenges of blended learning using a media annotation tool

Blended learning has been evolving as an important approach to learning and teaching in tertiary education. This approach incorporates learning in both online and face-to-face modes and promotes deep learning by incorporating the best of both approaches. An innovation in blended learning is the use of an online media annotation tool (MAT) in combination with face-to-face classes. This tool allows students to annotate their own or teacher-uploaded video adding to their understanding of professional skills in various disciplines in tertiary education. Examination of MAT occurred in 2011 and included nine cohorts of students using the tool. This article canvasses selected data relating to MAT including insights into the use of blended learning focussing on the challenges of combining face-to-face and online learning using a relatively new online tool.

Wikis: collaborative virtual learning environments

Ward Cunningham used the word wiki (the Hawaiian word meaning quick) to name the collaborative tool he developed for use on the internet in 1994. Wikis are fully editable websites. Users can visit, read, re-organize and update the structure and content (text and pictures) of a wiki as they see fit. This functionality is called open editing (Leuf & Cunningham, 2001). All a user needs to edit and read a wiki, is a web browser. Consequently, the wiki has great potential for use as a collaborative virtual learning environment. Wikis abound on the internet. A well known wiki is Wikipedia an online collaborative encyclopaedia, where anybody can read, edit, re-organize and update the encyclopaedia content (Wikipedia, 2004).

Investigating the impact of computer conferencing: content analysis as a manageable research tool

Content analysis of computer conferences provides a rich source of data for researching and understanding online learning. However the complexities of using content analysis in a relatively new research field have resulted in researchers avoiding its use as a qualitative or quantitative method and using more familiar methods such as survey and interview instead. Ethical issues are also raised that, though ensuring students’ rights, particularly to privacy and with no fear of coercion, are making it difficult for researchers to access and analyse archives of conference data as a research source. This paper suggests a pragmatic but systematic approach to solving these research issues by using several research strategies that are described in the context of the authors’ research and practice.

Communication dynamics : discussion boards, weblogs and the development of communities of inquiry in online learning environments

Online learning environments (OLEs) are now critical to teaching and learning across Australian higher education. Their influence impacts on the availability of content, the design of courses and, perhaps most pedagogically significantly, the nature of communication. The discussion board is the ubiquitous communication tool within these OLEs and hence significantly shapes the kind of communication that takes place. In light of this, the degree to which a successful community of inquiry can be facilitated through the use of discussion boards is examined and compared to the possibilities afforded by weblogs in the same role. Weblogs, it is argued, offer new opportunities in the development of social, cognitive and teacher presence online and should be considered in the development of or alongside established OLEs.

Teaching and learning online with wikis

Wikis are fully editable websites; any user can read or add content to a wiki site. This functionality means that wikis are an excellent tool for collaboration in an online environment. This paper presents wikis as a useful tool for facilitating online education. Basic wiki functionality is outlined and different wikis are reviewed to highlight the features that make them a valuable technology for teaching and learning online. Finally, the paper discuses a wiki project underway at Deakin University. This project uses a wiki to host an icebreaker exercise which aims to facilitate ongoing interaction between members of online learning groups. Wiki projects undertaken in America are outlined and future wiki research plans are also discussed. These wiki projects illustrate how e-learning practitioners can and are moving beyond their comfort zone by using wikis to enhance the process of teaching and learning online.

Constructing wikis as a platform for online collaboration in an e-learning environment

Previous studies conclude that finding a collaborative tool to suit the e-Iearning environment adequately is quite a task. Consequently, research has been conducted for this very purpose, to trial the use of wikis as a platform to support collaboration in a way that students will embrace and adopt for regular use. The wiki is easily accessible, requires no software and allows its contributors to feel a sense of responsibility and ownership. However there are wiki related challenges that have yet to be researched in the online e-Iearning environment. Possible intrusions, no opinion control, user hostility, and unintentional deletions or editing all require further investigation. This paper will further research the wiki environment in the tertiary e-Iearning setting, as well as consider wiki moderation, member authentication, and interest sustainability to support this community focused collaborative tool. Relevant results from the current case study are explored whilst delivering meaningful data, thus providing an insight into how wikis are an appropriate platform to incorporate in the online collaborative environment.

Development of an internet supportive platform for online teaching and learning of construction planning and scheduling

Construction Planning and Scheduling is taught for the fIrst time ill Semester 2, 2004 in the School of Architecture and Building, Deakin University. During the unit development process and the implementation of teaching activities, several issues arose in relation to implementing computer-aided construction scheduling and unit delivery in a unitary environment. Although various types of construction planning and scheduling software have been developed and applied, none of them can be run inside an online teaching software package, which provides powerful functions in administration. This research aims to explore the strategies to connect a project planning and scheduling software package and an online ~aching and learning software package by a Web-based support platform so that both the lecturer and students can draw up and communicate a construction plan or schedule with tables and fIgures. The key techniques of this supportive platfonn are idt;nlifies and they include a web-based graphically user-interfaced, dynamic and distributed multimedia data acquisition mechanism, which accepts users' drawings and retrieval information from canvas and stores the multimedia data ona server for further usage. This paper demonstrates the techniques and principals needed to construct such a multimedia data acquisition tool. This. research will fill the gap.in the literature in respect to an online pedagogical solution to an existing problem.

Teaching and learning: flexible modes and technology applications

Australian universities face many challenges In providing postgraduate midwifery education opportunities for registered nurses, particularly for those residing in rural areas. This paper will describe the measures implemented by a team of midwifery academics of Deakin university, Melbourne campus, specifically for units of study within the Graduate Diploma of Midwifery. As a consequence of these measures, student travel to a campus of the university and separation from their families and communities have been reduced. These innovative measures include a blended teaching approach incorporating face-to-face and online teaching consisting of Deakin Studies Online based in Web CT Vista, and Elluminate Live, an interactive online synchronous communication tool. Over the past 20 years in Australia, Deakin university has led the way in computer mediated learning methods and the challenge was to provide appropriate teaching strategies for course content to meet the requirements of the regulatory authority, the Nurses Board of Victoria (NBV), while promoting pedagogical methods of teaching and learning.

Learning dependency model for AMP-activated protein kinase regulation

The AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) acts as a metabolic master switch regulating several intracellular systems. The effect of AMPK on muscle cellular energy status makes this protein a promising pharmacological target for disease treatment. With increasingly available AMPK regulation data, it is critical to develop an efficient way to analyze the data since this assists in further understanding AMPK pathways. Bayesian networks can play an important role in expressing the dependency and causality in the data. This paper aims to analyse the regulation data using B-Course, a powerful analysis tool to exploit several theoretically elaborate results in the fields of Bayesian and causal modelling, and discover a certain type of multivariate probabilistic dependencies. The identified dependency models are easier to understand in comparison with the traditional frequent patterns.