Analysing online teaching and learning systems using MEAD

The review of literature pertaining to systems analysis and design and the design of systems for online teaching and learning has identified some “gaps” and has shown the need for a more specialised and specific method for the design of such systems. This paper presents research that was conducted to collect information to assist in the filling of the gaps of the systems analysis and design knowledge within Australia and also presents a method for the development of online teaching and learning systems. Currently design is done in an ad-hoc fashion with little formal input from the student users; this research aims to rectify this. The paper puts forwards an educational design approach based upon Soft Systems Methodology (SSM). The outcome of the research is a practical method – the Method for Educational Analysis and Design (MEAD).

Teaching and learning force as a representational issue : insights from a classroom video study

An enormous amount of research in the conceptual change tradition has shown the difficulty of learning fundamental science concepts, yet conceptual change schemes have failed to convincingly demonstrate improvements in supporting significant student learning. Recent work in cognitive science has challenged this purely conceptual view of learning, emphasising the role of languages, and the importance of personal and contextual aspects of  understanding science. The research described in this paper is designed around the notion that learning involves the recognition and development of students’ representational resources. In particular, we argue that difficulties with the concept of force are fundamentally representational in nature. The paper describes the planning and implementation of a classroom sequence in force that focuses on representations and their negotiation, and reports on the effectiveness of this perspective in guiding teaching and learning. Classroom sequences involving three teachers 158 2008 NARST Annual International Conference were videotaped using a combined focus on the teacher and groups of students. Video analysis software was used to code the variety of representations used, and sequences of representational negotiation. Stimulated recall interviews were conducted with teachers and students. The paper will report on the effect of this approach on teacher knowledge and pedagogy, and on student learning of force.

Leadership and learning across small rural schools

Educational leadership in Australia has undergone dramatic change over the past two decades, becoming increasingly complex as globalisation has profoundly affected and influenced schools and schooling.

School innovation in science: improving science teaching and learning in Australian schools

School Innovation in Science is a major Victorian Government initiative that developed and validated a model whereby schools can improve their  science teaching and learning. The initiative was developed and rolled out to more than 400 schools over the period 2000-2004. A research team worked with 200+ primary and secondary schools over three years, supporting them in developing new initiatives in science, and monitoring the impact on school and classroom practice, and student outcomes. The research effort underpinning the development phase included the development and validation of a set of components describing effective teaching, the refinement of a school and teacher change strategy, the development of instruments to monitor teacher classroom practice and a variety of student outcomes, and the development of insights into the change process using questionnaires, observations, and interviews across four years. This paper describes the project and its major outcomes, and raises a number of issues concerning the nature of school and teacher change, pedagogy, school and community, and student learning, and the way these interact. A number of research issues are raised by the size and developmental nature of the project, the range of research methods, and the different audiences served by the research. The issue of sustainability of such system-wide change initiatives is discussed.

Online delivery and learning in regional Australia : benefits and barriers

The potential for online learning to enhance learning opportunities of those living in regional Australia cannot be over-emphasised. This chapter* describes a study where online delivery was mapped to determine ‘what’ is happening and ‘why’. This enabled the benefits, barriers and ‘promoters’ of online learning to be identified. However, an important conclusion of this study is that there is a lack of consistent, comparable enrolment data relating to online learning, which obviously affects funding allocation decisions. To ensure high-quality learning experiences and appropriate support for students and staff, institutions require adequate funding and resources based on models which reflect the reality of online delivery and learning.

Developing effective learning programs : what extension can learn from the fields of adult education and learning communities

Learning is an investment in capacity building that has and will continue to reap rewards for primary producers and government in terms of increased sustainable production, profitability, exports, jobs and sustainable rural communities. Primary production operates in a context of continual change and requires up to date, complex and varied skills of primary producers and land managers.

A recent national research project funded by the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Australia confirmed that application of best practice from the theory of adult education in designing and developing learning programs in primary industry results in learning activities that provide information that is relevant to farmers’ needs, delivered in an entertaining way, and that draws on examples directly relevant to the participants. As a result, the training often exceeds the expectations of the participants.

The project produced a self-assessment checklist to identify ways of improving the development and delivery of training for extension practitioners and training providers. The key issues include continuous monitoring of client’s needs, and actively seeking opportunities to meet and work with industry organisations, other training providers and funding bodies.

There appear to be two drivers for the development of learning programs. One is problems or opportunities identified by people and organisations that could be termed ‘scanners’ and who tend not to be potential participants, the other is learning needs expressed by individuals or enterprises who want to participate in learning activities (participants). Scanners are typically industry organisations, government agencies and researchers, but may include providers and participants. Extension practitioners are well-placed to act as scanners.

It is very important that farmers and farmer organisations contribute to the development of new learning programs. Without industry input and support, extension practitioners and training providers cannot be expected to ensure they meet client needs. In other words, to develop effective learning programs, there must an industry learning community of producers, industry organisations, extension practitioners and training providers and other stakeholders such as supply chain enterprises, government and researchers.

The changing face of the Australian teaching profession : new generations and new ways of working and learning

Today’s workforce is characterised by an increasing mix of people with varying career aspirations, work motivators and job satisfiers. This paper discusses the intergenerational nature of today’s workforce, which is currently dominated by the age groups commonly referred to as Baby Boomers and Generation X. The Baby Boomers defined and redefined work during the last quarter of the twentieth century, but as they track towards retirement, GenXers’ valued work patterns and their career and life aspirations are increasingly dominating. This paper draws on a body of literature about a younger generation of workers and the current world of work in today’s knowledge society, and discusses possible implications for the teaching profession, particularly for attracting and retaining young people as teachers.

Craft groups : sites of friendship, empowerment, belonging and learning for older women

This article reports on a qualitative research project conducted in Victoria, Australia, with nine older women. The purpose of the research was to explore the women's experience of involvement in craft groups, and specifically, the impact of this involvement on their sense of well-being. Traditionally the health of older people has been examined in relation to medical markers of physical well-being, and often, decline. We were interested to widen this perspective to understand the impact of social connection, belonging and ongoing learning and development on the ageing experience. While the focus of the groups was on domestic craftwork, the process of coming together as a collective appeared to have significant bearing on the holistic health of the women involved. Consistent with feminist groupwork literature, the findings indicated that the women we interviewed experienced the group setting as affirming and generative in a number of ways. These include providing an avenue for mutual aid, addressing isolation, affirming individual and collective strength and wisdom, while acquiring new skills, and normalising concerns regarding health and family.

An explicit representational focus for teaching and learning about animals in the environment

There has been growing interest in linking the learning of Science with the literacies of Science and representations. Recent attention has been focused on learning theories that emphasise the socio-cultural and situated aspects of learning, and in particular the notion of learning as participation in a discourse community. This paper will describe a learning sequence planned wilh Year 5/6 teachers to study invertebrates in the schoolground environment, but with an additional focus in which students generated and negotiated representations, and discussed the adequacy of these. The paper will present data from video capture of classroom activities, students' work samples, and pre- and post-unit testing, to explore what a representational focus might entail in teaching science, and the role of representations in learning, reasoning and exploring in science.

Scaffolding students' learning in EME150 introduction to learners and learning theory : on looking back

This is a reflective article on the importance scaffolding in the EME 150 unit taught in collaboration with Deakin University Australia. Being the first unit introduced in the second semester of the first academic year, students were given a lot of support to enhance their understanding and learning since this curriculum was solely developed by Deakin University and introduced for the first time in teachers education curriculum. The scaffolding tools discussed in this article enabled students to a) establish deep learning of the theory. b) engage in collaborative and engaged learning which established good ethical relations between students c) transfer learning by applying theory into practice.

Different sounds, different musics, different teaching : an Australian case study in multicultural teaching and learning

This single case study is part of a wider ongoing research project, begun in 2005, entitled Intercultural attitudes of pre-service music education students from Deakin University and Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. One participant selected from the entire cohort and reinterviewed in 2009 as it was apparent that his experience and expertise outstripped all the others. This paper explores the tensions between authentic pedagogical practice, as understood by the interviewee, in community teaching and in a school. The data generated were analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Three major themes were identified: benefits of community music making, authentic learning, and reality of class music practice. The data demonstrate that authentic socio-cultural understanding is achievable in community music teaching, particularly in the honoring of what individuals bring the sharing of expertise between ensemble players and valuing community arts practice. However, as this is a case study demonstrates, at least in some schools, there is a lack of understanding of how multicultural music could and should be taught. Australian schools should encourage teachers who bring different sounds, different musics and different teaching into the classroom thus resolving to some degree, the potential mismatches between culturally developed learning styles and music teaching methods.

Teaching and learning centres : towards maturation

Approximately 70% of Australian Teaching and Learning Centres have been restructured and/or have undergone leadership changes in the last three years. The volatility of this environment reflects the number of significant challenges faced by Teaching and Learning Centres. In determining what makes Centres successful, the issues that are likely to impact on their ability to succeed were examined. It emerged that a myriad of factors influence whether or not a Centre was recognised as being an integral and valued part of the university’s teaching and learning community – a hallmark of having reached maturity. This paper identifies four factors as being critical to the ability of Centres to succeed, noting that a combination of other factors, appropriate to each unique context, must also be in place in order for Centres to maximise their value.

Developing the Deakin online teaching and learning repository

Slides for a report on the development of the Deakin online teaching and learning repository and the proposal to create a modern Deakin version of the 1991Najaden Collection of papers on collaborative learning through computer conferencing. The collection will be called Audio, Video, Disco - Look, Listen, Learn and contain 'best of breed' papers about Deakin's past and future as a distance edcuation - flexible learning university, from the Deakin online teaching and learning repository.

Learning from large data : bias, variance, sampling, and learning curves

One of the fundamental machine learning tasks is that of predictive classification. Given that organisations collect an ever increasing amount of data, predictive classification methods must be able to effectively and efficiently handle large amounts of data. However, it is understood that present requirements push existing algorithms to, and sometimes beyond, their limits since many classification prediction algorithms were designed when currently common data set sizes were beyond imagination. This has led to a significant amount of research into ways of making classification learning algorithms more effective and efficient. Although substantial progress has been made, a number of key questions have not been answered. This dissertation investigates two of these key questions. The first is whether different types of algorithms to those currently employed are required when using large data sets. This is answered by analysis of the way in which the bias plus variance decomposition of predictive classification error changes as training set size is increased. Experiments find that larger training sets require different types of algorithms to those currently used. Some insight into the characteristics of suitable algorithms is provided, and this may provide some direction for the development of future classification prediction algorithms which are specifically designed for use with large data sets. The second question investigated is that of the role of sampling in machine learning with large data sets. Sampling has long been used as a means of avoiding the need to scale up algorithms to suit the size of the data set by scaling down the size of the data sets to suit the algorithm. However, the costs of performing sampling have not been widely explored. Two popular sampling methods are compared with learning from all available data in terms of predictive accuracy, model complexity, and execution time. The comparison shows that sub-sampling generally products models with accuracy close to, and sometimes greater than, that obtainable from learning with all available data. This result suggests that it may be possible to develop algorithms that take advantage of the sub-sampling methodology to reduce the time required to infer a model while sacrificing little if any accuracy. Methods of improving effective and efficient learning via sampling are also investigated, and now sampling methodologies proposed. These methodologies include using a varying-proportion of instances to determine the next inference step and using a statistical calculation at each inference step to determine sufficient sample size. Experiments show that using a statistical calculation of sample size can not only substantially reduce execution time but can do so with only a small loss, and occasional gain, in accuracy. One of the common uses of sampling is in the construction of learning curves. Learning curves are often used to attempt to determine the optimal training size which will maximally reduce execution time while nut being detrimental to accuracy. An analysis of the performance of methods for detection of convergence of learning curves is performed, with the focus of the analysis on methods that calculate the gradient, of the tangent to the curve. Given that such methods can be susceptible to local accuracy plateaus, an investigation into the frequency of local plateaus is also performed. It is shown that local accuracy plateaus are a common occurrence, and that ensuring a small loss of accuracy often results in greater computational cost than learning from all available data. These results cast doubt over the applicability of gradient of tangent methods for detecting convergence, and of the viability of learning curves for reducing execution time in general.