First up, next conference is in Wellington (Te Papa) woo hoo!

Today (apart from the keynote, see below) I think the discussions and reflections between sessions were the most valuable, and I really can’t do justice to the myriad of amazing ideas and inspiration here.

Overall, engagement is a dynamic state influenced by interaction. For our distance learners, the question is how to create networks in geographical dislocations (that was an expression I picked up, it may or may not translate for us in NZ).

I’ve got some ideas for StudyUp (a mix of ideas for both on-campus and distance students).

• We need to engage more with lecturers.

• Get them to promote StudyUp directly
• Can run contact course StudyUp sessions.
• Promote the fact that we can run tailored StudyUp sessions for on-campus students, these don’t have to be during lecture times (if that is going to encroach on an already busy lecture schedule, can be any time and advertised to the students).
• Develop short YouTube videos (promotion of the series, and designed to reinforce key ideas from the sessions) – these videos could be used to promote StudyUp before and after lectures
• In terms of catering for our distance students and establishing an academic-based learning community, we could offer 1-to-1 Connect sessions for distance students.

We could also consider having a blog for distance students. The blog idea would work best if it focused on what students need to know when they need to know it – unfortunately our systems are not nearly as good as many of the universities here, so we wouldn’t be doing in this in a  particularly sophisticated way, but I’m sure we could manage it. Could look at the questions coming up in academic Q and A, for example.  And of course there is generic advice at certain times of the year (exams, for example).  Other universities also use blogs (etc) to remind students of important information, like the date for when they can withdraw without penalty.

As an addition to the blog, we could encourage vlogging. This is video blogging. We could encourage students to record short snippets of where they’re at, any advice they’ve got, any problems they’re experiencing, and post them on the blog (along with any appropriate commentary that directs students to information they need to know to help them through). 

Idea of the day – connect with Connect

If our leading edge with distance education is no longer current (providing students with printed material that was all nicely packaged), how about we encourage lecturers to actually give weekly lecturers to distance students. They could use Adobe Connect and run them how we run our “workshops on demand” (part of the StudyUp series).  Half hour sessions work really well. If they couldn’t rejig they’re lectures (if there wasn’t enough time/resources etc) they could consider at least running ½ hour tutorials.

I think one of the potential pitfalls of technology is that technology replaces actual contact, and we know that students benefit from actual contact with lecturers. However, you can easily use cheap and available technology to make contact – connect with Connect, perfect! 

The keynote today was on using technology (again, a recurring them really, but this session was great!).

The sound bite version is that technology in relation to the first year experience can be linked to:

• More learning
• Better learning
• Better teaching

In relation to more learning, check out two projects at La Trobe: Ready4Uni and Puzzlehunt. Also check out Pearsons labs (“my writing lab”) for literacy and numeracy. Some people also offer virtual tours covering important (in this case science) information. The virtual component actually reminded me of Terry’s brilliant work that he did that provided students the chance to experience (via the computer) the things that it is sometimes difficult to control in real life (or is dangerous etc etc).

In relation to better learning, it might be worthwhile checking out the book: “A guide to authentic e-learning”

Better teaching involved lecturers working smarter and not harder (using technology to record information about student attendance and grades etc). Also good for feedback and evaluation, analytics for supporting retention, and sharing teachable approaches.

The central message though was to enhance learning through the use of technology.

The principles guiding effective approaches were:

• Learners – accessibility and readiness
• Pedagogy – student-centred and enhancing connections (Ron Oliver made specific mention of Adobe Connect!)
• Teachers – trained, supported and encouraged
• Organisation – co-ordinated and considered, funded and integrated into the mainstream

He said the KEY to supporting student retention and success was to ensure effective assessment (hear, hear!).

Using technology

Again, this is the last post for today - there are four all up, so go down below to read them in order.

A few of the sessions discussed using technology to enhance student engagement. Technology seems to be used in a number of different ways: to promote activities/services, to teach students, and to monitor student engagement levels. There are definite benefits and some pitfalls to be weary of with all types of use.

Promoting services: This session was on using YouTube videos to promote services (and in some ways trying to match up student expectations with university expectations, like studying for your exams early etc). Useful things mention here were issues with orientation, that I’m sure are familiar with: poorly attended (actually, I don’t know that that is the case at Massey), out of context (telling students things before they know they need to know them), too much info, wrong tone (too bureaucratic) and at a time when students (if we are thinking students straight from school here) are too excited to pay attention.

Also worthy of mentioning was the upside of YouTube videos: “hear from a peer”, a friendly face/voice, student employment (students make them), and they capture a student perspective. They’re also reasonably cheap to produce (if you get talented students to do the work – thinking green shirts and design students here).

However, the problem of promoting the fact that you’ve made a video still remains as a big obstacle. The best approach appears to be embedding the videos into lectures. Several conference participants mentioned the value of playing videos before and after lectures (so the video is playing as the students walk in and as they leave). If we could ensure that the sound equipment was the same in all our lecture theatres I think that would be a brilliant idea!

Teaching students: There is the website I listed under “people/ideas to follow up on”, and I also got some information from the session on “Imagining the future”. The latter session gave a very impressive overview of the technologies that kids are growing up with today. And let’s face it, some of it was seriously cool. The clear links between how we can use the technology to actually teach something are less clear. My personal view is that you use technology to achieve a teaching-learning aim, rather than simply using a technology because it’s impressive and hoping that some learning happens along the way (but yes, call me old fashioned). I also wasn’t sure how these amazing new technologies will lead to “personalised learning”, because as much as that is a brilliant ideal to follow, the reality is that teaching groups of students is a very effective use of money and resources. At my table a colleague discussed his project which is about proving the effectiveness (or otherwise) of technologies on learning by mapping brain scans – this was an idea that I had never ever considered, and is really fascinating. I guess the upshot is that technologies that are clearly linked to teaching and learning objectives (while allowing room for more spontaneous experimentation of course) is what is desirable.

Monitoring levels of student engagement: What can I say, the University of New England are phenomenal. 80% of their students are distance learners, and they have the most amazing data warehouse to produce/assess some seriously impressive learning analytics. Jealous much?! Incredible stuff! They use Facebook, Twitter and Blogging to convey vital information to students. And they know they are conveying vital information, because they have been gathering the data on what is actually important to students. Seriously, I could go on forever about how great this was! But in short, they felt that some of their success was due to the fact that their student body are very online- savvy: students have to apply online (so do Massey students actually), and then all their contact with lecturers and course information is online. Sounds familiar actually, but what is missing for us is the very lovely and impressive system we can tap into and use to our advantage, like being able to set up automated yet customised emails that get sent to students, emails that then arrive back in your inbox all colour-coded depending on what stage in the process the student is up to – I was in organisational heaven listening that session. Brilliant!

They also used YoutTube, Twitter, Facebook and blogging to communicate with students. They had a number of ways of tracking students’ concerns, including cool things like the um, er, “word cloud” (and yes that had a swearword filter...) and then they could address those concerns via the different mediums. The result was that students were really feeling like they were part of the institution. They also got around some rather officious rules about how to communicate with students by being clear that they weren’t about marketing, but about providing information for enrolled students. Also a clear and important (I thought) message, was to listen to comments and criticism (from colleagues as well as students), because it will help inform your work and your earliest sceptics will often become your biggest allies. 

Thriving, not just surviving.

Listening to this session, I suspect some/a lot of our distance students may be surviving rather than thriving (for a whole range of reasons) especially if thriving is defined as: the presence of supportive and meaningful relationships; involvement in social activity; no substantial changes in mental health (increases in stress levels for example); and having strategies for coping with stress, and being able to balance study, work and family commitments.

The message from this session was again to embed positive strategies in the work that students are doing. 

People/ideas to follow-up on

(just FYI, we have all networked ourselves silly, I just didn't want to ask permission from other people to use a photo in my blog :-) )

• The student self analysis tool, developed by the Swinburne University of Technology.
• The Academic Development Group at RMIT (staff at RMIT are moving from their tumour inducing building – serious! – to brand new premises that have state of the art technology and they have spent the last 6 months encouraging and teaching staff about the possibilities of using this new technology – sounds fantastic).
• Quality improvement of first year assessment: practices and resources, Griffith University. Absolutely brilliant session covering how a former Learning Adviser worked with lecturers to improve their assessment practices. She developed fantastic paper-specific resources for students and also resources for staff to improve their assessment practices. Well worth following up on!
• Foundation paper compulsory at Murdoch University that teaches students writing, study and analytical skills.
• Not sure about this one, interested in your feedback, here’s the website: www.assignmentangels.com

The keynote session was on facilitating an effective transition into higher education. The two key messages were that student-led teaching and learning is at the heart of student retention and success, and that a sense of belonging in the academic sphere is vital (especially for at risk and lower socio-economic students).

Student engagement and belonging is at the heart of success.

Early engagement with an academic purpose is important. Students are less likely to use support services if they are not part of the academic sphere. And males are less likely to use support services (just as an aside, I’m not totally sure that statistic is reflected in the StudyUp on-campus participation rates so far, but will be interesting to have a close look at semester II).

There were a lot of great examples of programmes that engaged students, and the discussion focussed on various topics like having mature-age student support networks, teaching students how to work in groups (developing skills and rotating roles), and more work with high schools (using a partnership approach).

Overall, there was a reflective checklist that included improving the transition and retention rates by prioritising student capacity through social engagement with an academic purpose.  That actually made me think of tutorials and the fantastic role they used to play by getting small groups of students together to discuss that week’s lecture and the sessions were usually facilitated by a postgraduate student so that the whole peer assisted learning concept was fairly well embedded. Of course the tutorial model (as it was originally conceived) has not traditionally helped our distance students.