The power of the 6 three model for enhancing academic teachers' capacities for effective online teaching and learning: benefits, initiatives and future directions

To gain the full educational benefits of the major new investments in corporate technologies supporting online teaching and learning it is argued that a strategic, systems based approach to academic professional development (APD) is required. Such an approach requires a clear view of the key areas of potential and enduring teaching and learning benefit which can be realised from online developments, including an understanding of the changing role of the academic teacher in higher education, the identification of the desired professional capacities to educate online, and the implementation of a number of coordinated initiatives to develop these professional capacities in order to engage constructively with the learning and technology opportunities. Based on previous work, we propose a 6three model of Academic Professional Capacities Development for effective APD of online teaching and learning. The model can help inform the actions of policy makers, executives and practitioners in ways that promote an authentic learning organisation.

Committing to quality learning through adaptive online assessment

With advances in computer-based technologies and the emergence of e-learning, there are unprecedented opportunities to reconsider assessment of learning (and, axiomatically, of teaching) and how this can be undertaken. One approach is adaptive assessment. Although it has existed in the tertiary environment since the time of the oral examination, advanced technologies allow much fuller exploitation of the possibilities inherent in a dynamic system of testing that responds to the user. Having described the characteristics of adaptive assessment, this paper considers how it can achieve significant pedagogical aims within the sector. The paper differentiates between adaptive assessment to assist learning and adaptive assessment to assess achievement. How adaptive assessment can be put in place and salient issues, such as security and system integrity, when such assessment is used for credit, are then discussed. The paper concludes that the capability exists but it has yet to be exploited within higher education as a viable approach to assessment and as a contributor to quality learning.