Ed tech must reads: column #55

First published in Campus Morning Mail 4th Oct 2022

Should online learning have its own learning theories? from Tim Fawns

A slightly philosophical start to the CMM week with this question from Edinburgh Uni digital education expert Tim Fawns shared on Twitter last Tuesday. Unsurprisingly, it sparked wide ranging discussion about whether the modality or pedagogy matters more and how theory is currently used to support and enhance learning and teaching. Whatever you think, your position is likely to have been represented in this discussion.

Creating emotional engagement in online learning from Educause

The emotional side of learners’ time in education aren’t always at the front of mind of educators but research indicates strong ties between emotional experiences and the formation of memories. Melissa Fanshawe and colleagues built on Redmond et al’s work in online student engagement in this valuable project by exploring the emotional aspects of connectedness to their course. They offer some valuable practical advice for communicating more effectively with students.

Challenging Cheating symposium keynote – Weds 12th Oct 10am AEDT from CRADLE

Award winning scholar on academic integrity Dr Sarah Eaton kicks off CRADLE’s 2022 international research symposium with a keynote next week about academic integrity as a transdisciplinary field of research, policy and practice in Higher Education. As a hot topic in the sector, ranging across contract cheating, AI, research integrity, publication ethics and assessment, there is much to discuss and this looks likely to be a popular event.

Infusing educational technologies in the heart of the university from BJET

Given the all-pervasive nature of education technologies in Higher Education, it would seem that understanding, describing and improving the ways in which they are implemented institutionally should be a key focus of ed tech publications. Yet much of it relates more to localised interventions or high-level philosophy divorced from operational reality. This valuable systematic literature review from Bronwen Deacon and colleagues explores key organisational factors that shape successful and persistent education technology implementations, including leadership & strategy, infrastructure & resources and recognition & motivation.

Wordcloud of names of the authors of the published articles in top-5 journals between 2005 and 2020 from Twitter

While it is unclear which ‘top-5’ journals are used in this Wordcloud of author first names, the image makes a powerful point about academic publishing that many commenters nonetheless go out of their way to miss or obfuscate. This is a fantastic exemplar of a simple data tool from David Ubilava.