Training Lawyers Online

Greetings from the meeting of educational designers at the Australian National University in Canberra. One interesting presentation is on training Lawyers online. The idea is that the students do a finishing school in a simulated law firm, which makes heavy use of online tools. This is by Jonathan Powles, College of Law: The development of a simulated professional learning environment for law. Apart from the value in improved education, this has proved popular with the students and profitable for the university.

Educational Design in Canberra

The next meeting of educational designers at the Australian National University will be in Canberra, 16 October, 4-6pm. The event is free and open to interested educators from academia, government and industry (please RSVP). I will be giving a brief presentation on my Green ICT masters course, which is delivered without lectures or examinations.

Educational Design at the ANU
GAGGLE Program
4-6pm, 16 October 2009,
Sir Roland Wilson Building, Short Course Room 1 (on the left at the top of the stairs)

The ANU has educational designers, developers and technologists in every
College, each engaged in activities with a College-specific focus. This group meets regularly, but while there are common themes to their work, each area is using a slightly different approach to the issues.

In this session, representatives from each area will speak briefly about their
work, their professional practice, and the current focus of their operational activity. Each speaker will make a 10 minutes presentation, and then there will be a panel discussion about the issues and implications.

Session A: 1 hour

1. Megan Poore, College of Arts and the Social Sciences: New media
literacy in the new knowledge space
2. Aliya Steed / Jonathan Powles, College of Law: The development
of a simulated professional learning environment for law
3. Lauren Kane / Debbie Pioch, College of Engineering and Computer
Science: Online management of course information / CECS and the hubs and spokes project with UniSA
4. James Meek, College of Asia and the Pacific: The Conference
Model (and alternative to lectures) and Hidden Treasures (archival
source material)
5. Paula Newitt, Colleges of Science: Research experiences in the
undergraduate curriculum
6. Deborah Veness, College of Economics and Business: Finding a way
to make standards descriptors useful to a University teacher in the
business disciplines

Session B: 1/2 hour

Each speaker will finish with a provocative question, which will lead
into a group discussion.

Session C: 15-20 minutes

Finally, Tom Worthington will give us a brief presentation on his Green
ICT course, which is delivered without lectures or examinations.


Everyone is welcome, so please pass this invitation on to any of your colleagues not already on the mailing list. Please remind them to let me know if they are coming ... by 12 noon on Thursday.


Deborah Veness | Manager | Education Innovation Office | College of
Business & Economics | The Australian National University | Canberra ACT
0200, Australia

t: 61 (0)2 6125 9504 | e: deborah.veness@anu.edu.au | office: Rm 1136
Copland Building 24

Learning e-learning in Canberra

Greetings from the GAGGLE @ The Australian National University. This is a free meeting of educators at the ANU in Canberra, on e-learning and distance education. The program had to be changed to put the expert panel debate on first, because, ironically, the data projector is missing. Yoni Ryan, Allan Herrmann and Robert Fitzgerald are debating about the detail, standardisation and precision needed for describing university courses. What will be interesting is if universities will swallow their pride and ask for help from the vocational sector and industry bodies who have been doing this for years.

Robert Fitzgerald talked about the importance of the notion of presence with technology such as Twitter (his presentation is on Slideshare). He cited "The Social Life of Information", "The Wealth of Networks" and "Opening Up Education". He argued that Facebook had a symmetrical relationship (I would call it binary), where you have friends and not friends, whereas Twitter allows more complex relationships. It would seem to me that technology like Mahara would suit this.

Allan Herrmann talked about the effect of learning spaces on learning and how to design flexible learning spaces, both physical and virtual. He started with a quote from Alice Through the Looking Glass, the point of it was you need to know where you want to get to when designing the physical spaces and learning materials. He recommended the latest EduCause on designing learning spaces.

When someone finds the data projector, we will have Karen Visser and Jenny Edwards on the best of EDUCAUSE 2009.

Topics include the implementation of the open source Moodle learning management system at ANU (which I am using next semester to teach Green ICT around the world).

Canberra e-learning meeting

There will be a free meeting of educators at the ANU in Canberra, 19 May 2009 on e-learning and distance education. Topics include the implementation of the open source Moodle learning management system at ANU (which I am using next semester to teach Green ICT around the world).

GAGGLE @ The Australian National University

3-6pm, 19 May 2009

Sir Roland Wilson Building
Short Course Room 1, Level 3
(top of the stairs, on the left)

RSVP Deborah Veness

Program

3-3.15 pm	Meet and greet with a coffee and biscuit
3.15-3.45 pm	Good ideas in summary: the best of EDUCAUSE 2009 Karen Visser and Jenny Edwards
3.45-4.30 pm	Expert panel debate Educational Design in 2009: The Hot Topics Yoni Ryan, Allan Herrmann and Robert Fitzgerald
4.30-5 pm	Group discussion Favourite take-home ideas
5-6 pm	Drinks and informal debate and discussion

Speakers

Professor Yoni Ryan
BA Hons; DipEd; MA; (UQ); MEd (Melb); PhD (UQ)

Professor Yoni Ryan is Director of the Learning and Teaching Centre, Australian Catholic University, and has worked in education development at tertiary level in Australia and the Pacific for over 30 years, and specialising in educational design in her early career. She co-edited Supervising Postgraduate Research Students of Non-English Speaking Background (NESB (1999) with Prof. Ortrun Zuber-Skerritt, co-wrote major Australian government commissioned studies New Media and Borderless Education (1998) and The Business of Borderless Education (2000), and has most recently published with Associate Professor Rob Fitzgerald on Web 2.0 in education.

Her current research interests span the challenges of teaching new generation students, and using social technologies, as well as professional development for tertiary staff.

Mr Allan Herrmann

Allan Herrmann has been Manager of Educational Technology Services at the University of New South Wales for the past five years. Prior to that, he was a Senior Lecturer in Open and Distance Education at Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Western Australia. His main interests are e-learning in Defence environments, student and staff engagement with technology and isolated and rural distance education.

Dr Robert Fitzgerald
BEd (Prim); BEd (Sec Maths); MEd Hons (UNE); Phd (Syd)

Dr Robert Fitzgerald is Associate Dean Research, Faculty of Education, University of Canberra, and has worked for over 18 years in universities in Australia and Hong Kong. Robert has a strong grant and publication record in information and communications technology (ICT) particularly around its application to learning and capacity-building. He began his professional career in 1985 as a mathematics and computing teacher in the West Wimmera of Victoria working with his colleagues to trial the use of audio teleconferencing, facsimile, and computer conferencing software (Macintosh Timbuktu by Farallon Computing) to teach physics to remote students. He serves as an assessor for both the ARC (INTREADER) and ALTC (Australian Learning and Teaching Council) and has recently completed an ALTC project on Web2.0 and social technologies (Digital Learning Communities). Robert is currently working on a rural information and capacity building project using mobile technology in Cambodia (funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research).

Robert's current interests include elearning and the application of Web2.0 and social technologies to learning and problem solving; ICT integration and the role of open collaborative technologies and the use of ICT in developing countries (ICT4D). His website can be found at: http://mathetic.info.

Karen Visser and Jenny Edwards

Karen and Jenny work within the Information Services Support (ISS), Division of Information at the Australian National University to build information literacy capabilities across the campus community. The ISS unit supports academics, students and general staff to make the best use the rich information services available for research, administration, teaching and learning. These information services include: online learning management systems (Wattle and WebCT) for teaching and learning, using collaborative online services (Alliance/Sakai), using resources within the ANU Library, and being fluent users of Information Commons computers and software.

This group were finalists in the 2004 Australian Awards for University Teaching, Enhancement of the Quality of Teaching and Learning and winners of the 2006 Carrick Australian Awards for University Teaching, Awards for Programs than Enhance Learning.

The ISS team is currently engaged in working with the ANU community to move from WebCT4.1 to Wattle (Moodle augmented with a range of other tools and applications).

GAGGLE 'gægəln.1.2. an orderly and cheerful group of professional educational advisors