Ed tech must reads: column #57

October 21, 2022

First published in Campus Morning Mail 18th Oct 2022

Compared to what? Effects of social and temporal comparison standards of feedback in an e-learning context from International Journal of Education Technology in Higher Education

This rich article from Janson et al. seems to state the obvious at first glance, in that students perform better when the approach taken to assessment and feedback aligns with their personal preferences. It still offers some valuable insights into the nature of evaluation – whether learners are judged on their performance based on that of their peers or based on their past performance – and also whether feedback is largely descriptive or offers direction for improvement. The affordances of education technologies to support more personalised forms of evaluation are alluded to but the question of how this is done by educators is left to the practitioners.

Understanding of the needs of students with disabilities in Higher Ed is slowly growing but this paper shows that there is still much room for improvement when it comes to designing accessible learning resources and environments. Lowenthal and Lomellini acknowledge the multi-faceted nature of these activities in a modern university, investigating perceptions of the knowledge of both educators and “education technologists” – their catchall term for Third Space education advisors such as learning designers, academic developers and ed techs. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they note that the latter group tend to be better equipped for this work and they offer some practical suggestions for closing the gap.

This case study from Keith Heggart of the development of the UTS Grad Cert in Learning Design outlines some of the innovative and practical approaches to course design that you would kind of hope to get from something with a learning design focus. The use of microcredentials, a strong focus on practitioner voices and experience and an emphasis on building community in the space highlight good 21st century practice.

Instructor insights from MIT Open Courseware

The best MOOC I have ever taken is MIT’s 11.133x Implementation and Evaluation of Education Technology. (Yes, I am that sad and nerdy). The Instructor Insights pages for their open courses illustrate the strength of their approach to this space, here providing a rich explanation of the underpinning pedagogy, organisation and practice behind an introductory biology unit.

It seems like it was only months ago that using AI based creation tools required a certain level of geekery and access to powerful backend tools. This rather hypey video about a new Microsoft Design tool in the M365 suite (currently in limited access) shows how quickly this technology has been normalised.