Addressing inconsistency in use of the LMS: A collaborative approach
Full paper
Elizabeth Masterman
University of Oxford, UK
@acitoxford
Catch this session
Monday 4 December, 10.30am - 11am
Stream 1
Room H102
Abstract
Inconsistency in the use of the learning management system (LMS) by academic staff is a source of dissatisfaction among university students in the UK. One solution is to establish a set of minimum standards (or baseline) for LMS use within an individual institution. Another is to supply templates – frameworks for LMS course sites – with a view to providing students with a seamless experience in their interactions with the LMS.
This paper describes how the issue of inconsistency was addressed at a leading research university in the UK through an exploratory project, WebLearn Improved Student Experience (WISE). The widespread devolution of responsibility for site management to administrative staff, together with the ‘maverick’ creation of course sites by those academics who chose to engage with the WebLearn LMS, had resulted in unevenness in students’ access to learning materials. The project team engaged in close collaboration with 19 departments in order to achieve the immediate purpose of improving uptake of, and consistency in, their LMS presence. The ultimate aim was to develop a support package comprising LMS templates and ‘best practice’ guidelines that would enable departments in the future to achieve the same objective, either unsupported or with minimal assistance from the central team of learning technologists. The project was evaluated using a modification of the Innovation Histories method. The evaluation findings additionally threw into relief the complex social and cultural factors at play that can inhibit a consistent student experience in an institutional LMS.
About the authors
Elizabeth Masterman
Liz Masterman holds a PhD in Educational Technology from the University of Birmingham, UK, and is a senior researcher in the Academic IT Services group at the University of Oxford. Her research focused initially on Learning Design; projects included an evaluation of LAMS, and the Phoebe Pedagogy Planner and Learning Designer tools. Liz has also conducted research into the student digital experience, OER and open educational practice. She is currently involved in three institutional projects: a review of the centrally supported LMS, a trial of electronic essay exams, and the design and implementation of a Learning Design model for Oxford. Other activities include editing the Academic IT Services blog and co-ordinating the annual OxTALENT competition, which rewards the creative use of technology in teaching, learning, research and outreach at the University. In 2015 Liz co-chaired the annual conference of the UK’s Association for Learning Technology.
Analysing the learning pathways of students in a large flipped engineering course
Full paper
Carl Reidsema
The University of Queensland
@ReidsemaC
Hassan Khosravi
The University of Queensland
Melanie Fleming
The University of Queensland
@melaniejfleming
Lydia Kavanagh
The University of Queensland
@Lydia64
Nick Achilles
The University of Queensland
Esther Fink
The University of Queensland
Catch this session
Monday 4 December, 11.30am - 12pm
Stream 5
Room C204
Abstract
Recent advancements in educational technologies (learning management systems, online discussion forums, peer-learning tools) coupled with new methods of course delivery (e.g. blended, flipped, MOOCs) provide significant opportunities for universities to deliver challenging, high quality, yet engaging curriculum for students.
In this paper, we examine the variations and similarities of student’s approaches to learning (learning pathways) by examining how well they performed in a large (N ~ 1000 student) first year engineering flipped classroom. The analysis focused on student’s performance in their assessment (formative and summative) as well as their online interaction with a range of online tools purposely built to support students through peer learning and acquisition of resources and expertise. Analysis using k-means clustering reveals that students do in fact adopt a variety of successful pathways through the course. The unique aspects of this work lie in the use of analytics algorithms that whilst perhaps routinely utilised in data mining, are not as well utilised in better understanding patterns (successful or otherwise) of student interactions within a technology enhanced active learning environment that integrates theory with engineering practice.
About the authors
Carl Reidsema
Dr Reidsema’s work is centred around the notion of Transformational Change in Higher Education which is reflected by his success in securing grants and industry funding for research and development in this area exceeding $3M including a 2008 Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC) Project ”Design based curriculum reform” and the 2013 Office of Learning and Teaching (OLT) Project ”Radical transformation: re-imagining engineering education through flipping the classroom in a global learning partnership” partnering with Stanford, Purdue, Pittsburgh, Sydney and RMIT universities. He has received numerous nominations and awards for teaching including the UNSW Vice Chancellor’s Teaching Excellence Award in 2006 and has over 60 peer-reviewed publications in engineering education and design. He is regularly invited to speak on the topic of transformational change and innovative curriculum at Universities and Industry events.
Hassan Khosravi
Dr Hassan Khosravi is a Senior Lecturer in the Institute for Teaching and Learning Innovation and an Affiliate Academic in the School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering in the Faculty of Engineering, Architecture and Information Technology both at the University of Queensland. As a computer scientist by training, Hassan is passionate about the role of machine learning in the future of education. His research contributes to personalising education and translating traditional on-campus learning to authentic flexible learning in vibrant digital environments that better suit the needs and expectations of a digitally minded generation. In particular, his aim is to employ exemplary techniques from the fields of machine learning, data mining, learning analytics, and education to design, implement, validate and deliver solutions that use the digital footprints of learners towards improving students’ learning and enhancing their learning experience.
Melanie Fleming
Melanie’s research interests particularly focus on areas that enhance the student learning experience. These include first year pedagogy, and transitions to professional practice. She has developed novel methods to investigate student skills in programming, engineering and other disciplines drawing on social cognitive career theory, (particularly self-efficacy theory). Her current research interests involve linguistic analysis of student work drawing on sentiment analysis using computational linguistics and systemic functional linguistics techniques. She has worked on a number of projects to develop new learning technologies with student centred design principles. She has held consultant research and statistics positions in a variety of roles disciplines. Her previous work involved development of the first year experience, internationalisation of curriculum, work integrated learning and a range of other strategic priority areas. She is an educational researcher in the Faculty of Engineering, Architecture and Information Technology.
Lydia Kavanagh
Lydia combines professional engineering experience with a deep commitment to teaching, learning and leading in higher education. Her experience in industry allows her to embed authenticity in her teaching, and her commitment to HE has been recognised through Principal Fellowship with the Higher Education Academy.
In 2009, Lydia was appointed Director, First Year Engineering at The University of Queensland (UQ), where she transformed that program - today UQ enrols more than 900 BE students per year who engage in embedded authentic experiences from Day 1.
In 2011, she successfully led a national competitive grant project focused on ensuring successful student teamwork. In 2012, she was awarded a national Award for Teaching Excellence, and in 2014 she co-led an international project championing ‘flipped classrooms’. At UQ, her leadership has included establishing a T&L Development Program for early-career academics and co-founding a dual-Faculty centre (eLIPSE: eLearning Innovations and Partnerships in Science and Engineering), which is leading eLearning innovation through enabling collaborative partnerships.
Nick Achilles
Nicholas Achilles graduated at The University Of Queensland (UQ) with a bachelor’s degree in Information Technology. Since then, Nicholas has been working as a professional software developer within the “Centre for eLearning Innovations and Partnerships in Science and Engineering” (eLIPSE) at UQ. The variety of projects in this centre is diverse; ranging from data visualisation and processing, to machine learning applied to student personalisation, to web scalable student learning tools. Nicholas has been fortunate enough to work in all of these areas, primarily as a full stack developer. His professional goals are targeted at indulging in industry leading software development techniques, with a goal of transitioning into a backend specialist role. In his personal time, Nicholas works with wood, or bakes sweets which he then takes to picnics.
Esther Fink
Esther Fink is an eLearning Educational Designer who supports both faculty/school teaching and learning leaders and academic staff with the design, development, implementation and evaluation of online and blended learning. Her experience in higher education and vocational education spans 3 continents and 20 years.
Dramaturgy: A sociological perspective for conceptualising Me. Us. IT in the context of online learning
Experimental session
Dawn Gilmore
Swinburne University of Technology, Faculty of Health, Arts and Design
@dawngilmore9
Catch this session
Monday 4 December, 3.30pm - 4.30pm
Stream 1
Room H102
Abstract
A dramaturgical analysis seeks to understand people’s everyday lives through the aspects of a theatre. I propose that this is a useful analogy for illustrating how students experience learning in an online subject. Based on this analogy, an online student is an actor who crafts performances within the front stage and backstage of a particular university subject.
At the start of this session attendees are introduced to three theatre stages. These stages are defined as the front stage (the LMS), the backstage online (internet websites and social media), and the backstage offline (conversations with family, friends, and colleagues). Following this, attendees will meet student-avatars who play the theatre roles of performer, cameo, extra, and stagehand. The creation of the student-avatars was informed by a fourteen-month study of online university students. During this time data was collected from 224 student observations, 120 questionnaires, 26 interviews, and the content analysis of 1,857 discussion board posts.
Each student-avatar will communicate their learning journey by briefly sharing how they experience learning in the front stage, backstage online, and backstage offline. Through their stories, their preferences and patterns for individual experiences, group experiences, and the tools they most commonly use for university related tasks come to light. With the student-avatars in mind, attendees will design a short learning experience that acknowledges how students enact multiple identities across the three performance stages. The learning experiences will be collated into an online book that will be shared with conference attendees. This book symbolises how we can harness our collective intelligence to support online students.
About the authors
Dawn Gilmore
Dawn Gilmore has over 15 years of practice and research in teaching and learning in higher education. She has worked in institutions in the United States, Australia, Japan, England, China, and most recently South Africa. She has a M.S.Ed. in Intercultural Communication from the University of Pennsylvania and a B.S.Ed. in Social Sciences from Temple University. Her Ph.D. research explored where and with whom university students experience learning. During her doctoral candidature she was a Visiting Scholar at in the Centre for Teaching, Learning, and Development at the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa), where she researched the role of communities of practices in a Post Graduate Diploma of Higher Education. Overall, her research seeks to understand how students’ learning is situated across time and spaces. She also has broader interests in learning, community, and technology. Dawn is currently writing a book that is largely based on the content from this presentation.
CMALT cMOOC: Developing a scalable lecturer professional development framework
Full paper
Thomas Cochrane
Auckland University of Technology
@thomcochrane
Vickel Narayan
Auckland University of Technology
@vnarayan
Catch this session
Monday 4 December, 11am - 11.30am
Stream 2
Room R113
Abstract
This paper outlines the design stage of a project that reimagines lecturer professional development around a network of communities of practice scaffolded by a cMOOC (connectivist Massive Open Online Course), where sustained collaborative engagement with innovative teaching practice is recognised via established international peer-based professional accreditation pathways such as CMALT (Certified Member of the Association for Learning Technology). Informed by a design based research methodology, the CMALT cMOOC leverages a network of national and international collaboration and innovative teaching expertise, providing an agile and scalable framework to support the development of participants’ CMALT portfolios as evidence of critical engagement with new modes of practice and enhanced student outcomes. The cMOOC is designed based upon up-scaling the researchers’ community of practice (COP) model of lecturer professional development (Cochrane & Narayan, 2016c). Key to this model is the embedding of the scholarship of technology enhanced learning or SOTEL (Haynes, 2016), within lecturer praxis supported by a collaborative curriculum design process. The cMOOC provides a framework to support the development of lecturer COPs across a series of several weeks of participation throughout the academic year. The cMOOC is not conceptualised as a professional development course in the traditional sense, rather a mutual and collaborative initiative of willing participants to work together in order to enhance their understanding and knowledge of technology enhanced learning and teaching. Participation in the cMOOC is open, free and largely participant driven.
About the authors
Thomas Cochrane
Dr Thomas Cochrane is an academic advisor and senior lecturer in educational technology, the Centre for Learning And Teaching, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand. Thomas is the coordinator of the Ascilite mobile learning special interest group, and a mobile learning researcher/practitioner. http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0192-6118
Vickel Narayan
Vickel Narayan is a Learning and Teaching Consultant at the Centre for Learning and Teaching (CfLAT) at the Auckland University of Technology.
PhD (Murdoch), MComp, PGDComp, GDHE, BSc (Comp Sc & Info Sys)
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6833-706X
Conference Program
7.30am
| Registration desk opens | H102 |
| Tea and coffee available in the exhibition | Refectory |
8.30am – 9am
| Session title | Presenters | Type | Location |
| Welcome session | Chair: Professor Helen Partridge | Welcome | H102 |
9am – 10am
| Session title | Presenters | Type | Location |
| Keynote address: From blended learning to analytics: Why we keep getting IT wrong? | Professor James Arvanitakis | Keynote | H102 |
10am – 10.30am
| Morning tea | Refectory |
10.30am – 11am
| Session title | Presenters | Type | Location |
| Addressing inconsistency in use of the LMS: A collaborative approach | Elizabeth Masterman | Full paper | H102 |
| Using threshold concepts about online teaching to support novice online teachers: Designing professional development guidelines to individually assist academic staff (“me”) and collectively guide the institution (“us”) | Maria Northcote, Kevin Gosselin, Peter Kilgour, Catherine McLoughlin, Chris Boddey | Full paper | R113 |
| Competence-based assessment and digital badging as guidance in vocational teacher education | Sanna Brauer, Pirkko Siklander | Full paper | L206 |
| Evaluating the sustainability of tablet devices in blended learning | Cynthia Nicholas Palikat, Paul Gruba | Full paper | L209 |
| A learning analytics view of students’ use of self-regulation strategies for essay writing | Kelly Trezise, Paula de Barba, David Jennens, Alexander Zarebski, Robert Russo, Gregor Kennedy | Full paper | C204 |
11am – 11.30am
| Session title | Presenters | Type | Location |
| Me, Us and IT: Insiders’ views of the complex technical, organisational and personal elements in using virtual worlds in education | Sue Gregory, Brent Gregory, Denise Wood, Scott Grant, Sasha Nikolic et al | Full paper | H102 |
| CMALT cMOOC: Developing a scalable lecturer professional development framework | Thomas Cochrane, Vickel Narayan | Full paper | R113 |
| A framework for the analysis, comparison and evaluation of e-assessment systems | Pedro Isaias, Paula Miranda, Sarah Pifano | Full paper | L206 |
| Blended learning as a disruption in a vocational education building program | Meg Colasante, Cathy Hall-van den Elsen | Full paper | L209 |
| Recipes for institutional adoption of a teacher-driven learning analytics tool: Case studies from three Australian universities | Lorenzo Vigentini, Elsuida Kondo, Kevin Samnick, Danny Liu, Deb King, Adam Bridgeman | Full paper | C204 |
11.30am – 12pm
| Session title | Presenters | Type | Location |
| Challenges and tensions in the role of the LMS for medical education: Time for the “next generation LMS”? | Jill Lyall, Katharina Freund, Alexandra Webb | Full paper | H102 |
| A framework for program wide curriculum transformation | Angela Nicolettou, Andrea Chester, Spiros Soulis | Full paper | R113 |
| A cross-disciplinary evaluation of digitally recorded feedback in higher education | Michael Phillips, Tracii Ryan, Michael Henderson | Full paper | L206 |
| Variations in coherence and engagement in students’ experience of blended learning | Feifei Han, Robert Ellis | Full paper | L209 |
| Analysing the learning pathways of students in a large flipped engineering course | Carl Reidsema, Hassan Khosravi, Melanie Fleming, Lydia Kavanagh, Nick Achilles, Esther Fink | Full paper | C204 |
12pm – 1.30pm
| Lunch | Refectory |
12.15pm – 1.15pm
| ASCILITE AGM | H102 |
1.30pm – 1.50pm
| Session title | Presenters | Type | Location |
| Monash Rocks: The first step in an augmented reality journey through deep time | Barbara Macfarlan, Marion Anderson, Julie Boyce, Tom Chandler, Thomas Bochynek, Mike Yeates, Colin Maynard | Concise paper | H102 |
| Improving the undergraduate science experience through an evidence-based framework for design, implementation and evaluation of flipped learning | Yvonne Davila, Elaine Huber, Jorge Reyna, Peter Meier | Concise paper | R113 |
| A learning analytics pilot in Moodle and its impact on developing organisational capacity in a university | Jean-Christophe Froissard, Danny Liu, Deborah Richards, Amara Atif | Concise paper | L206 |
| Quantext: Analysing student responses to short-answer questions | Jenny McDonald, Adon Moskal | Concise paper | L209 |
| Me in a minute: A simple strategy for developing and showcasing personal employability | Trina Jorre de St Jorre, Liz Johnson, Gypsy O’Dea | Concise paper | C204 |
1.50pm – 2.10pm
| Session title | Presenters | Type | Location |
| Visualising mixed reality simulation for multiple users | Michael Cowling, James Birt | Concise paper | H102 |
| Using an e-authoring tool (H5P) to support blended learning: Librarians’ experience | Sarika Singh, Kirstin Scholz | Concise paper | R113 |
| Defining “data” in conversations with students about the ethical use of learning analytics | Abi Brooker, Linda Corrin, Negin Mirriahi, Josie Fisher | Concise paper | L206 |
| Knowing when to target students with timely academic learning support: Not a minefield with data mining | Elizabeth McCarthy | Concise paper | L209 |
| Social media in enabling education | Susan Hopkins | Concise paper | C204 |
2.10pm – 2.30pm
| Session title | Presenters | Type | Location |
| Using virtual and augmented reality to study architectural lighting | James Birt, Patricia Manyuru, Jonathan Nelson | Concise paper | H102 |
| Explaining learning achievement in student experience of blended learning: What can a sociomaterial perspective contribute? | Feifei Han, Robert Ellis | Concise paper | R113 |
| Understanding students’ views on feedback to inform the development of technology-supported feedback systems | Linda Corrin, Paula de Barba | Concise paper | L206 |
| Transforming exams: How IT works for BYOD e-exams | Mathew Hillier, Andrew Fluck | Concise paper | L209 |
2.30pm – 3pm
| Session title | Presenters | Type | Location |
| Get to know the ASCILITE SIGs (Special Interest Groups) | Hazel Jones, Colin Simpson, Mathew Hillier, Thomas Cochrane, Cassandra Colvin, Linda Corrin, Sakinah Alhadad, Julie Willems, Leanne Cameron | ASCILITE session | H102 |
| Learning analytics: What’s in it for me (the teacher) and us (myself and my students)? | Cathy Gunn, Claire Donald, Jenny McDonald | Lightning round | R113 |
| Micro-credentialing is the future of higher education | Ekaterina Pechenkina, Juliet Buchanan | Debate | L206 |
Lightning talks
|
L209 | ||
| Becoming an AJET author or reviewer | Michael Henderson, Eva Heinrich, Petrea Redmond | ASCILITE session | C204 |
3pm – 3.30pm
| Afternoon tea | Refectory |
3.30pm – 4.30pm
| Session title | Presenters | Type | Location |
| Dramaturgy: A sociological perspective for conceptualising Me. Us. IT in the context of online learning | Dawn Gilmore | Experimental session | H102 |
| Technology enhanced academic development: Exploring approaches for professional learning in higher education | Katharina Freund, Sarah Thorneycroft, Emily Rutherford, David Bruce Porter, Carole Hunter | Open fishbowl | R113 |
| Future happens: Hack your way to influencing and changing pedagogical and technological strategy and practice | Peter Bryant | Experimental session | L209 |
| Critical perspectives on mobile AR and VR from the ASCILITE Mobile Learning SIG | Thomas Cochrane, Helen Farley, Claudio Aguayo, James Birt, Michael Cowling, Roger Edmonds | ASCILITE session | L209 |
| Playing the education system: Competing, exploring, socialising, distrupting, but always engaging | Dan Laurence | Experimental session | T120 |
4.30pm – 5.30pm
| Welcome reception | Refectory |
6pm – 7.30pm
| Schools night | Refectory |
6pm – 8.30pm
| Star gazing | R113 and Gumbi Gumbi Gardens |
6.30pm onwards
| Dine around | Various |
8am
| Registration desk opens | H102 |
| Tea and coffee available in the exhibition | Refectory |
7.30am – 8.30am
| ASCILITE Conference first timers’ breakfast | Refectory |
9am – 9.30am
| Session title | Presenters | Type | Location |
| Welcome and ASCILITE awards | Chair: | Welcome | H102 |
9.30am – 10.30am
| Session title | Presenters | Type | Location |
| Keynote address: Robotics in the future of work | Marita Cheng | Keynote | H102 |
10.30am – 11am
| Morning tea | Refectory |
11am – 11.20am
11.20am – 11.40am
11.40am – 12pm
12pm – 12.30pm
12.30pm – 1.30pm
| Lunch | Refectory |
12.45pm – 1.15pm
| TEL Edvisor SIG chat | R113 |
1.30pm – 3pm
| Session title | Presenters | Type | Location |
| Exploratory panel: Privacy, trust, student data, and the university | Barney Dalgarno (chair), Jasmine Thomas, Kate Young, Kirsty Kitto, Allan Christie | Panel | H102 and free online session – no registration required! |
3pm – 3.45pm
3.45pm – 4.45pm
| Session title | Presenters | Type | Location |
| Are learning analytics leading us towards a utopian or dystopian future, and what can we as practitioners do to influence this? | Cassandra Colvin, Malcom Burt, Sue Gregory, Cathy Gunn, David Jones, Gregor Kennedy, Dirk Ifenthaler, Greg Thompson | ASCILITE session | H102 |
| Learning Design SIG | Eva Dobozy, Leanne Cameron | ASCILITE session | R113 |
| 2017 Year of Open: Is it worth celebrating in Australia? | Amelia Dowe, Tamara Heck, Neil Martin, Adrian Stagg, Catherine Wattiaux | Open fishbowl | L206 |
| Transforming exams: Stories from across Australia: ASCILITE e-Assessment SIG | Mathew Hillier, Andrew Fluck, Michael Cowling, Kenneth Howah, Matt Bower, Scott Grant, Amy Hubbell | ASCILITE session | L209 |
| Assuring quality online learning: The ASCILITE Technology Enhanced Learning Accreditation Scheme (TELAS) | Dominique Parrish | ASCILITE session | C204 |
| Speed editing with an AJET editor | AJET Editorial Team | ASCILITE session | T125 |
6.15pm – 11pm
| Dinner | Picnic Point |
8.30am
| Registration desk opens | H102 |
| Tea and coffee available in the exhibition | Refectory |
9.30am – 10.30am
| Session title | Presenters | Type | Location |
| Keynote address: Internet of Things, technology and our future | Amber Case | Keynote | H102 |
10.30am – 11am
| Morning tea | Refectory |
11am – 11.30am
| Session title | Presenters | Type | Location |
| The pedagogy-technology nexus: Bridging the divide between academic and student perspectives on educational technologies | Karin Barac, Sarah Prestridge, Katherine Main | Full paper | H102 |
| Flipping diverse classrooms: Instructor experiences and perceptions | Ekaterina Pechenkina | Full paper | R113 |
| Generating learning through the crowd: The role of social media practices in supporting students as producers at scale | Peter Bryant | Full paper | L206 |
| By design: Facing the academic challenges of implementing technology enhanced learning in higher education and the example of a third year biology unit | Brett Fyfield, Iwona Czaplinski | Full paper | L209 |
| Using the perceptions of online university students to improve the pedagogy and practice of distance educators: Them helping us to improve IT | David Bolton, Maria Northcote, Peter Kilgour, Jason Hinze | Full paper | C204 |
| The role of IT in prisoner education | Jane Garner | Full paper | T125 |
11.30am – 12pm
| Session title | Presenters | Type | Location |
| The changing nature of student engagement during a digital learning task | Paul Wiseman, Jason Lodge, Amaël Arguel, Gregor Kennedy | Full paper | H102 |
| Online global collaboration: Affordances and inhibitors | Julie Lindsay, Petrea Redmond | Full paper | R113 |
| Metaphors postgraduates use to depict their student experience: Individual, community and digital presence | Shelley Kinash, Linda Crane, Gary Hamlin, Amy Bannatyne | Full paper | L206 |
| From how to why: Student experiences of a university’s technology-enhanced learning over five years | Carol Russell | Full paper | L209 |
| Women and rural people’s participation in tertiary education through internet resources in India: A narrative inquiry | Sandeep Kaur Sandhu | Full paper | C204 |
| Developing an Australian Open Educational Practice SIG | Carina Bossu, Adrian Stagg | ASCILITE session | T125 |
12pm – 12.30pm
| Session title | Presenters | Type | Location |
| Internet of Things (IoT), PBL and 3D holographic modelling for smart agriculture education at The University of Queensland | Kim Bryceson, Amando Navas Borrero, Fabian Vasuian | Full paper | H102 |
| Using Cultural-Historical Activity Theory to describe a university-wide blended learning Initiative | Anselm Paul | Full paper | R113 |
| Student generated multimedia for supporting learning in an undergraduate physiotherapy course | Susan Coulson, Jessica Frawley | Full paper | L206 |
| It takes a village: Supporting the integration of digital textbooks in higher education | Debborah Smith | Full paper | L209 |
| Constructive alignment of materials in tertiary programs | Sook Jhee Yoon, Paul Gruba | Full paper | C204 |
| Developing a Digital Equity SIG | Julie Willems, Helen Farley, Chris Campbell | ASCILITE session | T125 |
12.30pm – 1.30pm
| Lunch | Refectory |
1.30pm – 2.30pm
| Session title | Presenters | Type | Location |
| Closing address: Reflecting on the past and imagining the future | Barney Dalgarno | H102 |
2.30pm – 3.30pm
| Closing reception | Courtyard |
Three post conference workshops will run on Thursday 7 December. Please note these are not included in the conference registration. Separate registration is required. More information about workshops.
9am
| Registration desk opens | R Block Level 1 |
10am – 1pm
| Session title | Presenters | Type | Location |
| Workshop 1: It’s Pedagogy GO with location-based mobile learning games | Roger Edmonds | Workshop | Z125 |
10am – 1.30pm
| Workshop 2: Transforming exams – hands on with the technology | Mathew Hillier, Andrew Fluck, Martin Coleman | Workshop | T125 |
10am – 4pm
| Workshop 3: Mobile virtual reality | Thomas Cochrane and David Sinfield | Workshop | T122 |
Exploratory panel: Privacy, trust, student data, and the university
Join us for a thought-provoking, and sometimes challenging, discussion on privacy, trust, student data and the university. This important discussion will be open and free for all to attend online.
Applications such as Facebook, Gmail, Twitter, and iTunes offer users convenience, connection, and content for no perceived upfront cost, but the currency of digital citizenship is privacy. Data collection, use, and resale by global companies reinforces the perception of private information as a commodity, with ethical, legal, and technological consequences largely unexplored.
As higher education institutions increasingly collect and use data, questions arise over student privacy and the impact on a relationship of trust. This is exacerbated by the use of third-party (and often commercial) products in the curriculum; from publisher texts and online resources that require unique student log-in, to test banks that track individual student performance, to the integration of services like Google+ and Facebook into learning and teaching activities. Furthermore, questions arise when companies dealing with student data are purchased by commercial interests and the data is seen as ‘goods and chattels’ in the company sale.
This panel seeks to explore emerging ethical, legal, educational, and technological issues surrounding the collection and use of student data by universities, and the impact these strategies have on student trust and privacy.
The session will be live-streamed and accessible either in-person at the conference, or online.
Please join us for what will be a thought-provoking, and sometimes challenging, session at ASCILITE 2017.
For those not able to attend the seminar, you can follow along via Twitter using the conference hashtag #ascilite17
About the panellists
Catch this session
Tuesday 5 December, 1.30pm – 3pm
Room H102 Allison Dickson Lecture Theatre
Live streamed via Zoom
Barney Dalgarno (facilitator)
Professor Barney Dalgarno is Director of Learning Online at Charles Sturt University, leading strategic innovation for Australia’s largest online learning provider. Professor Dalgarno’s research contributions have been in three broad areas: the relationship between learning technology and learning theory; learning in polysynchronous learning environments, including 3D virtual environments; and university teacher and student use of learning technologies. He has had international influence over many years through journal editorship, conference program committee leadership, and assessing of teaching awards and research grants for international bodies. He has obtained numerous grants and consultancies for higher education research and innovation and has authored over 75 refereed publications. Professor Dalgarno has received recognition for his innovative teaching and research including ALTC Citations in 2007 and 2011 and a 2013 ASCILITE Fellow Award.
Jasmine Thomas
Jasmine holds a Bachelor of Laws (hons) (USQ) and Graduate Certificate of Art and Design (UNSW). She has lectured in e-commerce law, privacy law and postgraduate legal research methodology. Her research interests lie in the areas of technology law, privacy law and legal ethics. She investigated technology use and the priority of place in lawyers’ ethics for her PhD (USQ) thesis, awarded in 2017.
Kirsty Kitto
Kirsty Kitto (@kirstykitto) is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). She models the ways in which humans interact with complex information environments, paying special attention to the interdependencies between language, attitudes, memory and learning. She works in the Connected Intelligence Centre (CIC) where she is seeking new ways of using data to help people navigate an increasingly connected world. She is currently leading a project funded by the Australian government which is developing xAPI based solutions for instructors who want to teach “in the wild” beyond the LMS, and a grant funded by Graduate Careers Australia which is seeking to use xAPI to use learning analytics to help university students work towards developing evidence about their skills and capabilities in a chosen career. In past roles, Kirsty has worked on many projects in partial secondments to QUTs Learning and Teaching Unit, including the Learning Futures project, the creation of a new generation of teaching performance metrics, and the REAL employability project.
Kate Young
Kate Young is currently studying a Bachelor of Health( Biomedical Science Major) as a pathway to medicine (however at the same time is totally prepared to fall in love with an area and end up in research!). Kate balances mixed-mode study with work and family, and is currently the Meet-Up Leader for Chemistry 1 and Chemistry 2, and is the president of the USQ Club of Science.
Allan Christie
Allan is currently the Vice-President, eLearning for Blackboard APAC and this reflects his 30+ years of experience as both an academic and industry leader in the area of eLearning. During his academic career, Allan published extensively and presented at many national and international conferences and was recognised for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at the University of South Australia. Through his long industry association with ASCILITE he was awarded a Life Member of the Society in 2003 and currently has the role of Treasurer. Allan has taken on a “thought-leadership” role in the region which includes conference presentations, panel membership, industry association involvement and social media (blog, twitter) engagement.
Workshops
Workshops will run on Thursday 7 December. There are three workshops available.
Please note: workshops are not included in the conference registration price and separate registration is required.
Workshop 1: It’s Pedagogy GO with location-based mobile learning games
Facilitator: Roger Edmonds
What can bonsai tells us about authentic learning with educational technology?
In this interactive workshop we will take you through all the steps of designing and developing a location-based mobile learning game using an online platform which is made for anyone to use to create and explore stories at locations of their choosing.
We’ll begin indoors by sharing our recent experiences in designing, developing and delivering location-based mobile learning games into courses across multiple disciplines in a University setting. Next, it’s outdoors into the adjacent Japanese Gardens to play a prototype location-based mobile learning game with your smart mobile devices. We then return inside to deconstruct how it was designed and developed.
Then it’s your turn.
In small groups (or individually) you’ll begin to create your own prototype location-based mobile learning game. We will start with the scope, consider narratives, show how to add media to locations and implement means of interactivity and simple gamification techniques. You will digitize the games in an online gamemaker, and spend the last 30 minutes of the workshop playing your games on your own mobile phones. This way, we’ll study location-based mobile learning games in a very practical way. At the end, you’ll understand what the underlying principles of location-based mobile learning games are and what challenges have to be dealt with in their design and development. Having created your own prototype mobile game, you’ll be ready to start doing so in your University or institution.
Before the workshop please download and install the free Mobile Learning Academy app on your iOS or Android phone from either the Apple App Store or Google Play. Delegates will also need to bring a wifi enabled laptop computer to the workshop. Plus, don’t forget to bring a long hat and sunglasses!
About the facilitator
Roger Edmonds
Roger is an online educational designer at the University of South Australia and has presented both internationally and nationally on location-based mobile learning. He is co-managing a project to inform the development of a framework that will guide contextually based mobile learning in the University. The project won a UniSA citation for its outstanding contribution to digital learning, a teaching excellence award for student experience within the UniSA Business School and was shortlisted in the global Wharton QS Stars Reimagine Education Award, all in 2016. Roger’s past projects have won finalist status in the 2011 Computerworld Honours Program and a Brandon Hall Silver Award for excellence in eLearning in 2003. He was also awarded the Centenary Medal of Australia in recognition for his lead role developing Australia’s Centenary of Federation’s Connecting-the-Kids online project.
Thursday 7 December
10am – 1pm
Venue: Z125
Capacity: 20
Registration fee: $100 (includes light lunch)
Workshop 2: Transforming exams – hands on with the technology
Facilitators: Mathew Hillier, Andrew Fluck, Martin Coleman
This is a free workshops sponsored by the Australian Government Department of Education and Training funded project Transforming Exams (Grant ID 15-4747). For more details, visit the project website.
This workshop will explore the rationale behind the OLT e-Exam system for high stakes exams, however, the majority of the session will be spent getting hands-on with the technology!
Participants will explore different features or modes of the e-Exam system. Starting with paper-equivalent exams centred on word documents, through to post-paper exams that can use spreadsheets, multimedia, third party software tools and potentially an off-line Moodle.
From a pedagogical viewpoint, the e-Exam system aims to promote authentic assessment using realistic ‘e-tools of the trade’ to enable constructed activity types in the exam room (Hillier & Fluck 2013, Fluck & Hillier 2014). However, we face a number of challenges in implementing such a dramatic shift. One of these is the need to re-think how high stakes assessments can be designed and deployed. This session will provide some inspiration by way of hands-on examples.
The running of an e-exam needs to be doable within the resources and environment of contemporary universities. The project team have recently developed guides and graphical user tools to help with the transfer of data and set-up of e-Exam USBs. Workshop participants will have an opportunity to test drive the GUI Admin tool and other approaches to administering e-Exam USBs.
The Transforming Exams Across Australia project has evolved to include 10 Australian universities, a national accreditation agency and several ‘birds of a feather’ international institutions. The project is running 2016 to 2018. Visit the project website for further information.
Participants will need to bring a compatible laptop. For further information, see requirements [PDF].
About the facilitators
Mathew Hillier
Mathew specialises in e-assessment and e-exams and teaches into the academic staff development program at Monash University leading the ‘technology and space’ theme. Mathew is one of two co-leaders of the ASCILITE SIG for ‘e-Assessment’ and in this capacity is a co-host of the Transforming Assessment webinar series along with Prof Geoffrey Crisp. Mathew is currently the leader of a half million dollar ‘Transforming Exams’ project developing a tool set for authentic, computerised, high-stakes assessment (e-Exams) covering 10 university partners. More about Mathew.
Andrew Fluck
Andrew is a teacher educator at the University of Tasmania, Australia. He has an interest in curriculum transformation through the use of computers; and is Chair of Working Group 3.3 (research into educational applications of information technologies) for IFIP/UNESCO. Andrew is the originator of the idea of using Bootable storage devices (first CD-Roms and then USBs sticks) for examinations. He has over a decade of experience in the design of post-paper examinations and the technology tools and logistics required to run successful exams both on campus and at distant exam centers. More about Andrew.
Martin Coleman
Martin is currently the lead technology developer on the ‘Transforming Exams’ national project. He has many years experience in developing Linux based technologies and in troubleshooting software and equipment. He has developed the most recent version of the e-Exam student component and a brand new Administrative tool designed to support the deployment of computerised exams.
Thursday 7 December
10am – 1.30pm
Venue: T125
Capacity: 40
Registration fee: Free (includes light lunch)
Workshop 3: Mobile virtual reality
Facilitators: Thomas Cochrane and David Sinfield
The workshop will explore user generated mobile 360 video production and integration into interactive virtual reality environments for education. Participants will experience using a low-cost, BYOD, rapid prototyping framework to create and share their own immersive mobile VR scenarios. Participants will need to bring their own mobile devices, including a smartphone and wifi enabled laptop. The workshop will explore the unique affordances of mobile devices for enabling participant-generated content and experiences using mobile VR.
Mobile Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) are anticipated to become multi-billion dollar industries in the near future, but how will this impact higher education? This workshop will introduce the basics of mobile Virtual Reality to explore and discuss the potential and issues surrounding the rapidly developing field of mobile Virtual Reality. Building upon the development of simple ecosystems for user-generated mobile VR, such as Google Cardboard, and the Samsung Gear VR, there is now widespread interest in these technologies, but still little expertise in integrating these within authentic educational experiences beyond another form of interactive content delivery. We will discuss the potential of mobile VR for user generated content and contexts, and share recent practice-based research, and invite interaction from the wider ASCILITE conference attendees.
About the facilitators
Thomas Cochrane
Dr Thomas Cochrane is an academic advisor and senior lecturer in educational technology, the Centre for Learning And Teaching, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand. Thomas is the coordinator of the Ascilite mobile learning special interest group, and a mobile learning researcher/practitioner. More about Thomas.
David Sinfield
David is a senior lecturer and programme director at Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand. He has created a new undergraduate programme that captured the aspects of Graphic Design, Moving Image and new technologies, such as mobile devices, AR and VR integrated within the undergraduate programme. In 2015 he was awarded the Vice Chancellor’s teaching excellence awards at AUT. He has worked in the field of Graphic Design and Visual Communications (specialising in typographic design and moving image) for over thirty years both nationally and internationally.
Thursday 7 December
10am – 4pm
Venue: T122
Capacity: 20
Registration fee: $150 (includes light lunch)
Star Gazing
ASCILITE 2017 provides you and your family with the opportunity to be an amateur astronomer for the night!
Internationally-renowned astrobiologist and astronomer Associate Professor Jonti Horner and the Astronomy Outreach Team from the University of Southern Queensland will take you on a cosmic journey of our Solar system and beyond.
Jonti will share his knowledge of the birth of the solar system to modern day astronomical events, a tale of violence and destruction, featuring craters, comets, and even the death of the dinosaurs!
The USQ Astronomy Team will then help you to find some of the famous constellations in the night sky using both naked eye observation and telescopes, and answer any questions you might have about astronomy and our place in the Universe.
The agenda for the evening will be:
- 6.00 – 7.00: Talk in R113
- 7.00 – 7.30pm: Refreshment break and walk to Gumbi Gumbi gardens
- 7.30 – 8.30: Star viewing
This event is open to all ASCILITE delegates and their families.
Registration is free but places are limited! Register now!
Date: Monday 4 December 2017
Time: 6pm – 8.30pm
Venue: R Block Room 113 (and the Gumbi Gubmi Gardens)
Campus map
Schools Night
As part of ASCILITE 2017, USQ is hosting a Schools Night so that primary and secondary educators and administrators can participate in the edtech showcase featuring some of Australia’s leading edtech designers and companies.
The night will feature ASCILITE 2017 keynote speaker Marita Cheng.
The Gender Divide
Marita Cheng, 2012 Young Australian of the Year, will share the leadership skills, creativity and steadfastness that it took for her to start Robogals and grow it to chapters in Australia, the UK, USA and Japan, all while studying full-time at University. Robogals teaches young girls robotics as a way to encourage participation in engineering and technology careers, and has taught 60,000 girls in 10 countries.
Educators and administrators interested in using educational technologies to impact the digital literacies of their students and provide a coherent transition from secondary school to university.
Primary and secondary teachers and administrations, we’d love to see you there!
Registration is free but places are limited!
About Marita Cheng
Marita Cheng was the 2012 Young Australian of the Year and is a technology entrepreneur and women in technology advocate. Marita Cheng is the founder and CEO of aubot (formerly 2Mar Robotics), which makes a telepresence robot, Teleport, for kids with cancer in hospital to attend school, people with a disability to attend work and to monitor and socialise with elderly people. As well as telepresence robots, Aubot does research and development in robotic arms, virtual reality and autonomous mapping and navigation.
Aubot has been recognised on a global scale through the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia in 2016, and through being called “the coolest girl at CES 2014” by VentureBeat magazine. Marita has presented about Teleport at the M.A.P. International CEO Conference in the Philippines in 2016, MIT Technology Review EmTech Singapore in 2015, and the 2014 World Entrepreneurship Forum in Lyon France.
While studying at Singularity University’s flagship 10-week program, the Graduate Studies Program, located at NASA Ames and on a full scholarship funded by Google, Marita cofounded Aipoly with Alberto Rizzoli. Profiled in TechCrunch within a week of the first prototype being made, Aipoly allows blind people to recognise objects using computer vision and has been downloaded 250,000 times in 7 languages since its launch at CES 2016.
Marita was named the 2012 Young Australian of the Year for demonstrating vision and leadership well beyond her years as the Founder and Executive Director of Robogals Global. Noticing the low number of girls in her engineering classes at the University of Melbourne, Marita rounded up her fellow engineering peers and they went to schools to teach girls robotics, as a way to encourage girls into engineering. While on academic exchange at Imperial College London, Marita expanded the group to London and through innovation and sheer will, Marita then expanded Robogals throughout Australia, the UK, the USA and Japan. The group runs robotics workshops, career talks and various other community activities to introduce young women to engineering.
Robogals has now taught 70,000 girls from 11 countries robotics workshops across 32 chapters. Robogals has been internationally recognised though the Global Engineering Deans Council Diversity in Engineering Award (2014), Grace Hopper Celebration’s Anita Borg Change Agent Award (2011), and the International Youth Foundation’s YouthActionNet Fellowship (2011).
Marita regularly travels around Australia presenting her work including appearing on Q&A on ABC beside two Nobel Laureates and the Chief Scientist of Australia (TV audience 600,000), and alongside Ashton Kutcher at Lenovo’s #TechMyWay (online audience 35,000). As well, she has presented overseas at Foxconn’s H.Spectrum by Yonglin Healthcare Startup Conference in Taiwan (2016), the 37th Kumon Japan Instructors Conference in Japan (2016), the World Engineering Education Forum in Dubai (2014), and the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts’ World Conference in Hong Kong (2014).
Marita was born in Cairns, Queensland, Australia. She grew up in housing commission with her brother and single-parent mother, who worked as a hotel room cleaner. She graduated from high school in 2006 in the top 0.2% of the nation, and that year was awarded Cairns Young Citizen of the Year for her volunteering and extra-curricula efforts, which included winning awards for mathematics, Japanese and piano. Marita speaks English, Cantonese and Japanese.
Marita has a Bachelor of Engineering (Mechatronics) / Bachelor of Computer Science from the University of Melbourne. She serves on the boards of Robogals Global, the Foundation for Young Australians, and RMIT’s New Enterprise Investment Fund, where she helps decide on startup investments, the Victorian State Innovation Expert Panel, and the Clinton Health Access Initiative’s Tech Advisory Board. In her spare time, Marita enjoys reading, travelling and daydreaming.
Date: Monday 4 December 2017
Time: 6pm – 7.30pm
Venue: R Block Refectory
Campus map
Keynote Speakers
Video interviews with our keynote speakers now available! See below.
Professor James Arvanitakis: From blended learning to analytics: Why we keep getting IT wrong?
Within the educational setting, the promises of technology rarely live up to what is delivered. Be it a lack of commitment, tools that fail to deliver the flexibility desired, faculty resistance or failure to commit resources, students frequently feel let down and educators are often frustrated. While most of us aim to ensure that the pedagogy trumps technology, it is more likely to that the pedagogy is shaped by the technology we can utilise. In this presentation, I will draw on a cross cultural project involving Australian and Indian universities to outline how we can better deliver the programs we promise with the technology available, rather than being held hostage by it.
Post-keynote interview
Shelley Kinash from USQ’s Office for the Advancement of Learning and Teaching interviewed our first keynote, James Arvanitakis.
About Professor James Arvanitakis
w jamesarvanitakis.net | t @jarvanitakis
Professor James Arvanitakis is the Dean of the Graduate Research School at Western Sydney University. He is also a lecturer in Humanities and a member of the University’s Institute for Cultural and Society. James was also the founding Head of The Academy at Western Sydney University that received an Australian Financial Review higher education excellence award (2016) and the Western Sydney Leadership Dialogue Excellence in Education Award (2017).
James is internationally recognised for his innovative teaching style and was the recipient of the Prime Minister’s University Teacher of the Year Award in 2012 and an Eminent Researcher Award from the Australia India Education Council in 2015. In 2017 he was appointed a Research Fellow of the Australian Indian Institute and he sits on the Australian Indian Education Working Party.
A former economist and free market advocate, James changed his position after witnessing child and indentured labour. After 9 years of working in finance, he has since worked with a cross section of organisations across Australia, Asia, Pacific and Europe including Oxfam Hong Kong, Aid/Watch and Friends of the Earth (France).
His research areas include citizenship, resilience, piracy and the future of universities. James has authored over 100 articles in 2016 released three books: Sociologic (a first year sociology textbook with Oxford University Press), Citizen Scholar and the future of universities (Palgrave), and From Despair to Hope (Penguin). In 2017, he will be releasing a new edited collection on the Australian Indian Higher Education collaboration he has been overseeing. James is a regular media commentator appearing on ABC TV and hosts the podcast ‘Sociologic’.
James is a board member of the Public Education Foundation, the Chair of Diversity Arts Australia, an Academic Fellow at the Australian India Institute and a Research Fellow at the Centre for Policy Development.
Marita Cheng: Robotics in the future of work
Marita Cheng will take you through the robots of tomorrow and how AI will shape our future in ways greater than we can imagine today. From machines that can see for us, process data accurately and at a greater speed than humans, and robots that get the job done and don’t answer back. There is much to think about and prepare for as we create the future of work, but most importantly – what we can do to educate and equip our graduates for this future.
Post keynote interview
USQ Director of Library Services, Carmel O’Sullivan, chatted with Marita Cheng.
About Marita Cheng
w maritacheng.com | t @maritacheng
Marita Cheng was the 2012 Young Australian of the Year and is a technology entrepreneur and women in technology advocate. Marita Cheng is the founder and CEO of aubot (formerly 2Mar Robotics), which makes a telepresence robot, Teleport, for kids with cancer in hospital to attend school, people with a disability to attend work and to monitor and socialise with elderly people. As well as telepresence robots, Aubot does research and development in robotic arms, virtual reality and autonomous mapping and navigation.
Aubot has been recognised on a global scale through the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia in 2016, and through being called “the coolest girl at CES 2014” by VentureBeat magazine. Marita has presented about Teleport at the M.A.P. International CEO Conference in the Philippines in 2016, MIT Technology Review EmTech Singapore in 2015, and the 2014 World Entrepreneurship Forum in Lyon France.
While studying at Singularity University’s flagship 10-week program, the Graduate Studies Program, located at NASA Ames and on a full scholarship funded by Google, Marita cofounded Aipoly with Alberto Rizzoli. Profiled in TechCrunch within a week of the first prototype being made, Aipoly allows blind people to recognise objects using computer vision and has been downloaded 250,000 times in 7 languages since its launch at CES 2016.
Marita was named the 2012 Young Australian of the Year for demonstrating vision and leadership well beyond her years as the Founder and Executive Director of Robogals Global. Noticing the low number of girls in her engineering classes at the University of Melbourne, Marita rounded up her fellow engineering peers and they went to schools to teach girls robotics, as a way to encourage girls into engineering. While on academic exchange at Imperial College London, Marita expanded the group to London and through innovation and sheer will, Marita then expanded Robogals throughout Australia, the UK, the USA and Japan. The group runs robotics workshops, career talks and various other community activities to introduce young women to engineering.
Robogals has now taught 70,000 girls from 11 countries robotics workshops across 32 chapters. Robogals has been internationally recognised though the Global Engineering Deans Council Diversity in Engineering Award (2014), Grace Hopper Celebration’s Anita Borg Change Agent Award (2011), and the International Youth Foundation’s YouthActionNet Fellowship (2011).
Marita regularly travels around Australia presenting her work including appearing on Q&A on ABC beside two Nobel Laureates and the Chief Scientist of Australia (TV audience 600,000), and alongside Ashton Kutcher at Lenovo’s #TechMyWay (online audience 35,000). As well, she has presented overseas at Foxconn’s H.Spectrum by Yonglin Healthcare Startup Conference in Taiwan (2016), the 37th Kumon Japan Instructors Conference in Japan (2016), the World Engineering Education Forum in Dubai (2014), and the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts’ World Conference in Hong Kong (2014).
Marita was born in Cairns, Queensland, Australia. She grew up in housing commission with her brother and single-parent mother, who worked as a hotel room cleaner. She graduated from high school in 2006 in the top 0.2% of the nation, and that year was awarded Cairns Young Citizen of the Year for her volunteering and extra-curricula efforts, which included winning awards for mathematics, Japanese and piano. Marita speaks English, Cantonese and Japanese.
Marita has a Bachelor of Engineering (Mechatronics) / Bachelor of Computer Science from the University of Melbourne. She serves on the boards of Robogals Global, the Foundation for Young Australians, and RMIT’s New Enterprise Investment Fund, where she helps decide on startup investments, the Victorian State Innovation Expert Panel, and the Clinton Health Access Initiative’s Tech Advisory Board. In her spare time, Marita enjoys reading, travelling and daydreaming.
Amber Case: Internet of Things, technology and our future
Our world is made of information that competes for our attention. How does it affect us as individuals? Does it help us learn or does it get in the way? What are the implications for the way we learn and teach in tertiary education? How does technology help us engage with community? The world is no longer dominated by desktop computers. We are mobile and more organic. We need an equivalent computing and design framework to ensure that technology fits into our lives and empowers us. We need to live alongside it instead of being controlled by it. To find some direction, we can look to concepts of Calm Technology. The terms calm computing and calm technology were coined in 1995 by PARC Researchers Mark Weiser and John Seely Brown in reaction to the increasing complexities that information technologies were creating. Calm technology describes a state of technological maturity where a user’s primary task is not computing, but being human. The idea behind Calm Technology is to have smarter people, not things. Technology shouldn’t require all of our attention, just some of it, and only when necessary. How can our devices take advantage of location, proximity and haptics to help improve our lives instead of getting in the way? How can designers can make apps “ambient” while respecting privacy and security? This talk will cover how to use principles of Calm Technology to design the next generation of connected devices. We’ll look at notification styles, compressing information into other senses, and designing for the least amount of cognitive overhead. We’ll also look at the rise of Artificial Intelligence, and at future considerations of ethics and automation.
Post keynote interview
Kate Davis from USQ’s Digital Life Lab interviewed Amber Case.
About Amber Case
w caseorganic.com | t @caseorganic
Amber Case studies the interaction between humans and computers and how our relationship with information is changing the way cultures think, act, and understand their worlds. She is currently a fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society and a visiting researcher at the MIT Center for Civic Media.
Amber is the author of Calm Technology:Principles and patterns for non-intrusive design. She spoke about the future of the interface for SXSW 2012’s keynote address, and her TED talk, “We are all cyborgs now,” has been viewed over a million times. Named one of National Geographic’s Emerging Explorers, she’s been listed among Inc. Magazine’s 30 under 30 and featured among Fast Company’s Most Influential Women in Technology. She was the co-founder and former CEO of Geoloqi, a location-based software company acquired by Esri in 2012. In 2008, Amber founded CyborgCamp, an unconference on the future of humans and computers.
Amber lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Portland, Oregon.