Ed tech must reads: column #49

First published in Campus Morning Mail on Tuesday 23rd August

Online learning is still challenging for students – they need our support from Times Higher Education

One thing I’ve always found strange in discussions of online learning is the hard line that seems to be drawn between the in-person guided experience and everything else that students do in their learning. Arguably, there has always been an expectation that students will do the bulk of their work in their own time and space. This piece by Lodge, de Barba and Broadbent, academics at UQ, UniMelb and Deakin respectively, explores some of the challenges that learners face in self-regulated online learning, offering some broad suggestions on what educators might consider to better design and facilitate learning that is done outside the classroom.

Teaching Enhancement Resource Curation from Danielle Hinton

This Padlet assembles more than 50 different resources (mostly crowdsourced Twitter discussions) covering the gamut of tips for improving learning and teaching practices in Higher Education. It includes everything from teaching while masked to learning spaces, teaching with technology to assessment and feedback researchers, and small group teaching and the importance of data. It’s absolutely a rabbit hole but definitely one to bookmark at the very least.

Demystifying Instructional Design Podcast from Rebecca Hogue

Instructional design is more commonly referred to as learning or education design in Australia but the underpinning principles are the same. Working with education/learning designers can be another very effective way for time poor educators to find new ways to support learners in the brave new online world. The interviews cover many facets of instructional design including behaviour change, asynchronous activities and creating social presence.

Amazon launches Udemy Competitor from ClassCentral

Education technology and online learning is a multi-billion dollar business, so it’s unsurprising that Big Tech has been edging into the space for some time. Microsoft Teams gets more like an LMS by the day, Google has its Classroom platform and now Amazon has pitched its stake in the micro-credential short course space. This post provides a brief overview of their tech focused offerings, which on first glance seem to fall into the common trap for these platforms of treating learning as content rather than experience.

Digital Ethics: Sustainable ePortfolio Practice – Blended workshop Thursday 25/8 9.30 – 11.30am from AAEEBL

ePortfolios can be an incredibly rich tool for learning and assessment but it is important to be mindful of the workload involved in using them well. This joint workshop from ePortfolios Australia and the Association for Authentic, Experiential & Evidence-based learning can be attended online or in person at hubs in Melbourne, Brisbane and Townsville.