Ed & Tech must-reads 230925

Digital textbook deals spark controversy from University Affairs

Funnily enough, in my second ever column for this blog/newsletter/whatever in 2021 on the (sadly) defunct Campus Morning Mail, I posted a story about a new initiative by Pearson to become the Netflix of textbooks by allowing students to subscribe to their wares instead of buying books outright. I was more open to the idea back then but it appears that these plans have a tendency to go sadly awry. This Canadian story highlights what happens when these arrangements are made mandatory - student unions have concerns about privacy and librarians find that these schemes limit student options. Plus ça change - the more things change…

ASCILITE 2025 conference program is now available from ASCILITE

The Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education annual conference is one of the larger events of the ed & tech calendar here in Australasia and the program highlights the richness of contributions that make it so. Pop along on Monday afternoon and listen to me wax lyrical about third space practitioner roles (academic developers, learning designers, educational technologists) and what we can do to better understand and support them. This will serve as a wrap up of my doctoral research into the matter, which is now completed. 🙂 

Educator Advisors in Australian Higher Education: Their Roles, Purpose and Contribution to Learning and Teaching from Colin Simpson

As the saying loosely goes, it takes a village to create a thesis (and a village idiot to actually write it). This has been a significant part of my life for the last 9 years - I think it turned out ok. Many people helped and hopefully they are all listed in the acknowledgements.

Risk management of shadow IT in higher education from Joel Larson

But I’ve said enough about me - what do you think of me? No - this is another thesis that caught my attention recently - it takes a deep dive into an aspect of university IT policy and practice that many well meaning innovators find infuriating but which is absolutely necessary as part of the bigger picture. That being, the ways that institutional IT departments handle rogue ed tech implementations - the sneaky servers sitting underneath desks that lecturers run unapproved software on to enhance teaching and learning in their courses. It’s often not as draconian as some may think - with IT administrators and educational technologists working to find balance between security/privacy/infrastructure needs and creating opportunities for innovation and academic autonomy. These aspects of the ed tech ecosystem are seldom discussed - I read far more flowery work about barbarity and repression in a corporate hellhole - and this work offers some useful practical insights into the reality of technology in education.