Education for the Future of Work

The Australian Senate Committee on the Future of Work and Workers has invited me to speak to them on Monday at 2:10pm. The program for the day runs from 9am to 5pm:

 9.00 am PlanDo
 9.40 am Dementia Australia
10.20 am Break
10.35 am The Group of Eight
11.15 am Volunteering Australia
Australian Internships
11.55 am Department of Human Services
Department of Social Services
12.35 pm Lunch
1.30 pm The Australian National University
Professor Peter Whiteford
2.10 pm Australian Information Industry Association & Attachment 1
Mr Tom Worthington
 2.50 pm Break
 3.05 pm Australian Bureau of Statistics
Productivity Commission
 3.55 pm Department of Jobs and Small Business
Department of Industry, Innovation and Science
Department of Education and Training
 5.00 pm Adjournment

The committee has my short written submission. Committees usually don't want formal presentations, but I thought I would prepare one just in case:

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Educating the Future Workforce

Tom Worthington, The Higher Education Whisperer

Submission to the Senate Select Committee on the Future of Work and Workers

2:10pm, Monday 4 June 2018, Senate Hearing Room 2S1

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Education for a more flexible workforce

Australia needs an education system which is short sharp and mobile. 

For inquiry on the impact of technological and other change on the future of work and workers in Australia¹, reference “6. any related matters”. 

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Strengthen VET

Students should be able to complete a VET qualification at secondary school, go on to further study in the VET system (while working part-time) and then to university.

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Make University More Flexible

1. Encourage universities to offer nested, standardized programs which offer sub-degree entry and exit points. 
2. Students should be able to start with a sub-degree program and then continue their studies for a degree. 
3. Policy needs to recognize that most university students now studying on-line so they can work at the same time.

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Teacher's Computing Skills

Teachers teaching computing should be fully, formally, dual qualified in computing and teaching. Australia already has better systems for doing this than the UK.

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 STEM Subjects Addressing Real Issues

STEM student projects on real world issues, such as climate change. This requires, project based work addressing issues

Innovation and hacking competitions for school and higher education.

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On-line Nested University Programs

• Sub-degree entry and exit points
•  Flexibility to study off-campus.

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Soft skills

Soft skills through courses and project work. Example: ANU's "TechLauncher program

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Train University Academics to Teach

Academics need formal teaching qualifications.

Training is needed to be able to use RPL, RCL, e-portfolios and other tools.

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See Also

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1. Inquiry Into the impact of technological and other change on the future of work and workersSelect Committee on the Future of Work and Workers, Australian Senate https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Future_of_Work_and_Workers/FutureofWork
2. Higher Education in Australia: Short Sharp and Mobile, Higher Education Whisperer, March 19, 2018 http://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/2018/02/higher-education-in-australia-short.html
3. ICT Sustainability: Assessment and Strategies for a Low Carbon Future, Tom Worthington, 2018 http://www.tomw.net.au/ict_sustainability/introduction.shtml
4. Canberra Start-up Business Boomerang, Tom Worthington, 2017 http://www.tomw.net.au/digital_teaching/instructional_design.shtml#cbb
5. TechLauncher, ANU College of Engineering & Computer Science https://cs.anu.edu.au/TechLauncher/
6. ANU Project Bootcamp with Lego and User Centered Process, Higher Education Whisperer, February 25, 2018 http://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/2018/02/anu-project-bootcamp-with-lego-and-user.html
7. Introduce Teaching as a Specialization for Computer Professionals, Higher Education Whisperer, January 10, 2017 http://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/2017/01/introduce-teaching-as-specialization.html

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Educating the Future Workforce

Speaking Notes

Tom Worthington, MEd FHEA FACS CP

Good afternoon, I am a computer and educational technology consultant. As an Honorary Senior Lecturer in Computer Science at the Australian National University I teach computer professionals in skills for and with computers. As a member of the Professional Education Governance Committee of the Australian Computer Society I help set the education standards for future professionals. ANU and ACS have made submissions to this inquiry, but my views here as an individual interested in education for work.
 

It is generally agreed that technology will eliminate many jobs. Workers will need better soft and technical skills, plus retraining for multiple careers.

The Australian education system already allows for work-ready learning across schools, VET and university. Some minor adjustments can make the system more flexible.

1. Strengthen the VET system and have it blended with secondary schooling at the lower end and university at the upper end. Students should be able to complete a VET qualification at secondary school, go on to further study in the VET system (while working part-time) and then to university, still while working. 
2. Make the university system more flexible. We need to encourage universities to offer nested, standardized programs which offer sub-degree entry and exit points. Students should be able to start with a sub-degree program and then continue their studies for a degree. Most university courses are already blended, but government policy and university practice needs to recognize that most university students now, in effect, studying on-line so they can work at the same time.
3. Rather than focusing on traditional campus based three years university degrees, I suggest policy should prioritize on-line, nested, programs which offer sub-degree entry and exit points, with the flexibility to study off-campus. 
4. Soft skills can be addressed in specific university courses and in project work. Soft skills figure prominently in the ANU's "TechLauncher⁵ program of group project work for STEM students. Techlauncher students undertake team building exercises and have mentors, tutors and clients with industry experience. Some of this looks like fun, where students play with Lego, but there is also a lot of hard work on team and client relationship skills.
5. In addition, we need teachers in schools, VET and university, who have training and formal qualifications in how to teach these skills. This is particularly a problem in universities where academic staff have higher research degrees, but minimal teacher training. Academics need formal teaching qualifications.

Crisis Needed to Reform Higher Education

Greetings from the National Library of Australia where Professor Bruce Chapman, architect of the HECS student loan scheme is speaking. He suggested that this radical reform was introduced due to a crisis in university funding. Professor Chapman argued that this contingent loan scheme (students only repay when their income reaches a specific level) was fairer than "free" university where the rich tended to attend. I asked Professor Chapman about vocational education and training (VET). He suggested that contingent loans could be relatively easily extended to VET (I will suggest this to the Senate on Monday).

Professor Chapman is speaking along with John Dawkins, former Minister of Education, Professor Linda Botterill, Professor Shirley Leitch at the 2018 Sir Roland Wilson Dialogue. A video will be available later.

Report of the Australian Parliament Inquiry into school to work transition

The Australian House of Representatives Inquiry into school to work transition has issued the report "Unique Individuals, Broad Skills" (30 May 2018). The report has missed that vocational education, university and other  higher education, along with much secondary education is moving online.

The report mentions online education once, with reference to apprenticeships, but does not discuss the implications for education. This is a little like discussing the future of the taxi or accommodation industries without mentioning Uber or Airbnb. Hopefully the Senate Select Committee on the Future of Work and Workers (which I am talking to Monday) will not make this mistake.

Recommendation 5 refers to the education of teachers, but could be applied to any vocationally related program:

"... accrediting programs, higher education providers be required to be able to demonstrate that their programs have evidence-based pedagogical approaches, effective integration of professional experience, rigorous and iterative assessment of pre-service teachers throughout their education, and final assessments that ensure pre-service teachers are classroom ready."

One interesting set of statistics in Figure 4.1 (page 75) has the  percentage of post school pathway for 2016 students. The largest is 69% going to university versus TAFE, college and apprenticeships at 21%. I suggest the latter needs to be higher.

 Contents

Terms of Reference
List of Recommendations

1. Introduction
2. Teaching and teachers
3. Measurements of gain in school
4. Opportunities to better inform and support students in relation to post-school education and training
5. Students with disability

A. Submissions
B. List of hearings and witnesses

Athabasca University Strategic Plan

The  "Athabasca University Strategic Plan" (March, 2018) is not so much a strategic plan, as an aspirational statement for marketing purposes. AU needs to prepare an actual plan, along the lines of "A Vision for Teaching and Learning at The Australian National University".

The AU Plan says:

"Imagine: Transforming Lives, Transforming Communities

Open, Flexible, and Everywhere

Our families, our jobs, our communities: the most important things in our lives are changing. To prepare for change, to lead it, we are driven to be more open, more flexible, and more adaptable - no matter who we are, how old we are, or where we live."

That is good to aspire to, but how does the university plan to go beyond is current distance education open university model to be "... more open, more flexible, and more adaptable ..."?

It starts to tell us something useful on page 2:

"Athabasca University was North America’s first online university. Its open and flexible environment is built on leveraging technology to enable learning. Athabasca is re-imagining its founding spirit with new investments in digital education. Athabasca University will never stop striving to perfect it."

However, the claim that AU was was "North America’s first online university" is one which may be challenged by other institutions.


AU is an open online distance university, much like University of Southern Queensland in Australia. These institutions have struggled to be accepted as equal to traditional campus based institutions on the one hand and compete with free online education on the other. At the same time they have the same pressures facing conventional universities of meeting increasing community expectations.

ps: The AU document is hard to read, as a PDF download and via the website. At 37 Megabytes the PDF document is ten times larger than it need be and contains tiny text on a landscape format page. The web version is no easier to read, breaking the document up into tiny chunks, making it hard to follow. AU has a Centre for Distance Education with specialists in communicating educational concepts online (some of them were my instructors in the Master of Education in Distance Education). Perhaps AU could consult these experts to help design their planning documents for an online audience.

Improving Teaching and Learning at ANU

ANU has released " A Vision for Teaching and Learning at The Australian National University" prepared by consultant Diane Joseph (2017). This recommends consulting the University community on a Teaching and Learning Strategy. Teaching development and building programs were two areas to be explored.

The draft Vision for Teaching and Learning at the ANU is (p. 3):

"Our students are future ready, capable of solving problems not yet imagined to improve their lives, the lives of others and their communities."

 This is covered by four pillars (p. 4):

1. "Determined Students
2. Inspiring Academics 
3. An Enriching Environment
4. A Connected Community
5. High quality teaching and learning is underpinned by the ANU values"

The interesting question then is how to achieve these. There are nineteen recommendations of the report (p. 4), including:

"... 4.1 Identify, encourage and support lead practitioners to model and share effective collaborative learning pedagogies in the CLE Building ...
5.1 Develop a Teaching and Learning Strategy ...
6.1 Support and encourage distinctive approaches to education, including technology-enhanced learning ...
7.1 Develop a Teaching Professional Development and Resourcing Plan ...
8.1 Identify requirements for potential building programs to enable the Vision for Teaching and Learning ..."

Suggestions for the ANU Teaching and Learning Vision

As a member of the ANU community (former student, donor and honorary lecturer) with an interest in teaching, I have six suggestions for advancing the vision:

1. Increase teaching effectiveness with good course design
2. Increase student engagement with real-world challenges
3. Teach university academics to teach
4. Give teaching staff a modern student experience
5. Personalize the student experience without reducing the student to staff ratio
6. Prove flexible new buildings and adapt old ones 

In detail:

1. Increase teaching effectiveness with good course design

Teaching effectiveness can be increased by designing courses and programs using project design techniques. First consult the prospective employers as to what skills and knowledge graduates will require. Then translate those requirements into learning objectives.  Design assessment to test for those objectives. Lastly provide educational materials and learning activities to prepare students for the assessment tasks. The time of the staff and students need to be carefully budgeted to achieve the required assessment results.

An example of this top-down design is the course "ICT Sustainability", offered as COMP7310 by ANU and COMP635 by Athabasca University, Canada. This is designed around the Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA), used for international accreditation of computer professionals. The SFIA skills are mapped to learning objectives in the course, with major assignments for each objective. There are small weekly exercises to help students build the skills and knowledge needed for the assignments.

The time needed for students to undertake readings, videos, quizzes and discussion activities where estimated for ICT Sustainability and budgeted to fit in the available study time. This included an estimate of the words in readings multiplied by the average reading time of a graduate student (from published research). The time needed for the instructor to run the course and conduct assessment was also budgeted. In this course lectures are not used and the weekly work is by automated quizzes and peer assessment, to free up the teacher's time to help students.

2. Increase student engagement with real-world challenges

Student engagement can be increased by providing real-world problems for students to solve and authentic assessment (not end of term examinations). Every task we ask students to undertake can be mapped to the problem solving exercises they will have to undertake. To keep students on task, learning skills and knowledge for this challenge, they can be given frequent small assessment tasks with rapid feedback.

The students in ANU TechLauncher have to work in teams building an engineering or software solution for a real client. Students are evaluated on their teamwork and problem solving by their peers, the tutors and the client.
Students also have the option of working on a start-up in the Innovation ACT competition. This approach has been utilized at other universities, such as UBC Electrical and Computer Engineering, with their "New Venture Design" course (APSC 486).

3. Teach University Academics to Teach

Those teaching at university need to know how to teach. However, university academics are reluctant to enroll in conventional classroom based training courses. The same approaches used to improve student engagement can be applied to staff: providing real-world problems to solve in the workplace, with authentic assessment.

Education for staff can be conducted using the techniques the institution aims to use for students. In particular learning should be primarily on-line, supplemented with blended and flipped classes in flat floor classrooms. Group activities, capstone projects and e-portfolios should be used for learning and assessment. There should be a minimum of lectures and no paper based examinations.

Short courses and online tips can be provided (ACU have some good ones). However, as with school and  vocational teachers, those teaching at universities would benefit from having formal qualifications in education. The aim should be to have junior teaching staff with an AQF Level 8 Graduate Certificate in education (or a Certificate IV in training for those who also teach in the VET sector), mid-level academics a Diploma of Education (or Graduate Diploma), and senior academics a Bachelor Degree or Masters Degree of Education (Coursework).

Staff should also be encouraged to join learned societies, such as HEA and HERDSA, as a supplement to formal qualifications in education.

4. Give Teaching Staff a Modern Student Experience

Local workplaces should provide support and encouragement for staff to undertake study for educational qualifications. In particular staff need to do "Dog-Fooding": experience what it is like to be a university student in the modern environment, so they have an understanding of the pressures imposed on their students. Staff on education courses should be encouraged to undertake projects for their studies in the workplace and to immediately apply what they have learned in their teaching. It should be noted that academics who supervise research students are also engaged in education.

5. Personalize the student experience without reducing the student to staff ratio

The student to staff ratio is unrelated to the quality of learning. High quality education can be provided with large classes, if the learning is well designed by qualified educators using proven techniques. Providing realistic tasks for students to undertake in groups, with the use of peer feedback and assessment, supported by automated tools helps.

6. Prove Flexible New Buildings and Adapt Old Ones

Interactive group learning requires new classrooms. Tiered lectures theaters are unsuitable for interactive group activities. Large rooms with flat floors, and preferably with furniture on wheels, are required. These can be new built, or adoptions of existing buildings.

An example of such a facility is the Auditorium at Fitzwilliam College Cambridge (UK). Electrically operated, retractable tiered searing allows rooms to be used for flat floor teaching and, and at the push of a button, convert to a lecture theater. This design is now being implemented for the ANU Kambri Development.

 However, the new teaching spaces will require staff to be trained in new teaching techniques, including the on-line elements which support the classroom experience. Also this may require some minor items of equipment.

Experience with the existing temporary large flat floor classrooms at ANU shows that a room with 300 students working in groups is feasible, but requires good teaching team coordination. Some of the equipment can be low tech, such as a whistle to get student's attention when they were deep in discussion.

The recently opened Foreign Affairs Diplomatic Academy  shows that an exiting office building can be converted to attractive flexible flat floor classrooms. The Academy's impressive new premises have large rooms which can be divided for smaller classes.

See also:

1. Dogfooding: Learning to Design for International Students by Being an International online Student, 2017
2. A Green Computing Professional Education Course Online, 2012
3. Digital Teaching In Higher Education (e-book), 2017.
4. Educating the Future Workforce, Submission  to the Senate Select Committee on the Future of Work and Workers, 2018.
5. Education for Sustainable Development, Submission to the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), March 2018.

Secure Information Architecture for Information Warfare

Greetings from the National Pres Club In Canberra, where Dr Asif Gill is speaking on "Secure information architecture: security by design". Dr Gill is describing the strategy and architecture needed to get from the current insecure state of an IT system to the desired more secure state.

Dr Gill is describing a defensive strategy however, it occurs to me that the same approach could be used for thinking about offensive operations, where the desired state is less secure for your opponent.

This is my second security presentation for the day. The Minister for Foreign Affairs recently opened Australia's Diplomatic Academy. The Academy's impressive new premises are a short walk  from the Press Club. Today the Academy hosted a presentation by the Australian National University's National Security College on The New Weapons: Propaganda, Misinformation and Fake News. This is the topic of an ANU short course starting next week.

An Indo-Pacific Strategy for Australia

Greetings from the Australian National University in Canberra, where Director of the ANU Crawford School of Public Policy, Professor Rory Medcalf, is speaking on "Mapping our future: towards an Indo-Pacific strategy for Australia". He emphasized China's dependence on oil transported by ship through the Indian Ocean. However, China has embarked on the largest implementation of renewable energy, electrified railways and electric vehicles the world has seen. China does need oil from the middle east, for the present. But this may less important to China in the long term than it does in Australia and the USA.

Professor Medcalf suggested there is an unspoken consensus between the Australian government and opposition that Australia should participate in China's Belt and Road projects, on a case by case basis. He argues that China find the term "indo-pacific" politically loaded against it. Professor Medcalf also pointed out that France had called for an "Indo-Pacific Axis". That might be an even more unfortunate term, given the extent to which China suffered from the Rome–Berlin–Tokyo Axis in WWII.

Professor Medcalf mentioned soft power, including. The ANU now offeres courses in both defensive and offensive cyber-operations and teach a little on the ethics of cyber-warfare over the South-China Sea. He also mentioned aid and development. I was one of a team at ANU which prepared a proposal to provide high quality, accessible education across the Indo-Pacific: "Peace Through Superior Education".

Everything is Interrelated

Dr Birgit Penzenstadler,
California State University

One of the rewards for having written published papers is that you get cited. Google Scholar sent me an alert to say I get a mention in a paper by Birgit Penzenstadler, and others (2018), with the intriguing title "Everything is interrelated". This describes an intensive week long  course on Software Engineering for Sustainability (SE4S) at Lappeenranta University of Technology (LUT), Finland.

This report is useful as along with the theory as to why and what was planned, the authors showed what was changed in the light of experience during the week. No plan survives contact with the students (apologies to General von Moltke).

The authors are a little dismissive when referring to my green computing course (Worthington, 2012), saying such modules can be  "... plugged into the existing computing course". But what I suggest they could have done is use such on-line modules before their intensive face-to-face sessions. This way the students can be introduced to the basic concepts without using up valuable classroom time.

In the past there has been a problem in getting students to actually complete preparatory material. But this can be solved by making the material assessable with small automated quizzes and peer assessed discussions.

References

Penzenstadler, B., Betz, S., Venters, C. C., Chitchyan, R., Porras, J., Seyff, N., ... & Becker, C. (2018). Everything is interrelated: Teaching Software Engineering for Sustainability. Proceedings of the 40th International Conference on Software Engineering. URL https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/87821/1/Everything%20is%20interrelated_TSpace.pdf

Worthington, T. (2012, July). A Green computing professional education course online: Designing and delivering a course in ICT sustainability using Internet and eBooks. In Computer Science & Education (ICCSE), 2012 7th International Conference on (pp. 263-266). IEEE. URL https://doi.org/10.1109/ICCSE.2012.6295070

Using an ePortfolio to capture students' skill sets to align to workplace

At EduTECH, 8 June in Sydney, I be speaking on "Using an ePortfolio to capture students' skill sets to align to workplace". I would welcome corrections and comments on my draft presentation:

"Tom teaches university computing students how to undertake real projects for real clients. This has included an artifact mapping tool for the Plain of Jars in Laos and test software for the radars on Australian warships. These real-world projects require real-world assessment techniques, including e-portfolios. In this presentation he discusses:

• Innovative education techniques to teach students how to better communicate with employers and people 

• How to build students confidence and capture their skills set to become more job ready 

• How to provide formal postgraduate education to students in their workplaces via mobile devices"

What Makes for a Good Student Experience?

The Australian 2017 Student Experience Survey (QILT, 2018), shows three non-government universities with much higher undergraduate student satisfaction than other institutions. It would be easy to conclude that private institutions do better, but is that the case? It may be what they teach and who they teach, as much as how.

The good news is that while some Australian universities rate better than others on student satisfaction, they all rate well. Universities are tending to move more of the teaching online. This provides students with better access to learning, but may result in overall lower student satisfaction results.

Most Australian universities scored between 70% to just above 80% on educational experience for undergraduate students in 2017. Three exceptions were Bond University, The University of Notre Dame Australia, and the University of Divinity, all over 90%. However, not all non-government universities did well. Torrens University Australia, the only private for-profit university in Australia, had a score of only 77.6%, below many government universities.

Torrens is essentially an online university and these tend to rate poorly on student satisfaction. The University of Southern Queensland, which also has many online students also rated poorly at 73.6% (I have completed two online courses at USQ and thought they were good).

Absent from the QILT report is Open Universities Australia (OUA), a consortium of universities offering online courses. OUA would be likely to have a low student satisfaction score, similar to USQ and Torrens. It would be easy to conclude that these institutions are doing something wrong. But they accept students who would otherwise not be able to study at all. Given a choice, I am sure these students are more satisfied being able to study, than not.

The QILT report mention of online study in the Executive summary (page iv):

"The largest variation was that external/distance students were less likely to respond positively about their Learner Engagement, 22 per cent and 63 per cent respectively. Older students also rated Learner Engagement less positively than younger students, but this difference is most likely associated with the prevalence of external or internal study modes in these age groups.

Large differences in results by study mode for Learner Engagement continues to suggest that this scale may be performing differently for internal/mixed mode students and external mode students. The Department of Education and Training is currently considering a review
of the Learner Engagement scale. As an interim measure, the QILT website, which reports SES results at the institution by study area level, will continue to exclude external mode responses for the Learner Engagement focus area. This report, however, which reports SES results at national and aggregate levels, includes external mode responses in all Learner Engagement results. ..."

Also section 3.3 "The postgraduate coursework student experience by study area":

"The widest range in focus area results was for Learner Engagement, with 34 percentage points separating the study areas with the highest and lowest results, Rehabilitation at 72 per cent, and Nursing at 38 per cent, which may be associated with the relative proportion of online or distance learning associated with the various study areas."

New Teaching Techniques for Teaching New Student Teachers

The Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) reports that online education is becoming more common for training new teachers, up from 13% in 2005 to 25% in 2016. The typical student is an older female with a full time job and family responsibilities. Not surprisingly, they are studying part time. This research is contained in the report  "The rise of online initial teacher education: what do we know?", AITSL May 2018.

The same problems apply to online teacher education as to any online program. It is more difficult to engage students online, they take longer to complete and fail to complete at a higher rate. Also, as with any vocational program requiring work placements, this is more difficult with remote students.

The good news is that an online program provides access to eduction which would otherwise be denied those with family responsibilities and jobs. Also the quality of such graduates is no different to that of on-campus students.

AITSL's estimate of 25% of teaching students studying off campus may be an underestimate. I suggest it is likely that more than half of all Australian university students are effectively studying off-campus. While officially enrolled on-campus, students take advantage of the online components of courses, to minimize on-campus time. The typical student is balancing study with a job and other commitments.

ps: Last year I completed a MEd online at Athabasca University. My fellow students were as described by AITSL. I felt very much in the odd one out, as I did not have a husband, two children, a dog and an alpine sport. ;-)

Law and the Gig Economy

Greetings from the Australian National University where a panel is discussing "Law and global financial security".

Pauline Bomball started by pointing out that most gig economy workers are regraded as contractors and so do not receive employee entitlements. A court will decide if the worker is working in their own business, or that of the company.

Cameron Roles went back to when an employee was a "servant" working for a "master". He argued this did not fit today and that even those now regarded as "employees" are not adequately protected, let alone those of the gig economy. The gig economy platforms can provide cheap labor by excluding employee entitlements. Consumers have become used to the lower fees resulting. He also suggested that government reforms contribute to this, such as with the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), which favor outsourced services. He wants to research innovative solutions, such as casual employees having entitlements bought out in exchange for flexibility. 

Professor Peta Spender discussed crowd funding. One success was Flowhive, but Professor Spender pointed out that two third of crow funding campaigns fail to reach their funding target. Crowd funding can be for general community benefit (with ANU suggesting researchers should explore this option).  The Ukraine is crowdfunding its army. Professor Spender expressed concern over a privatized welfare system with Go-fund-me having an "accidents and emergencies" area.  Also there may be difficulties with unsophisticated investors in crowdfunding and possible fraud. Australia has laws to attempt to limit harmful outcomes but enforcement through class actions may not work (it occurs to me that class actions are a sort of crown funded legal case).

Professor Sally Wheeler, pointed out that technology had been accommodating contract law since the days of the telex (I suggest it actually goes back much further to the telegram). Despite a bad press from the dark web Professor Wheeler suggested that blockchain could be used positively for tracking a fish from catch to plate. Contracts are about trust, but are we trusting the blockchain technology or the business partner.

The question I put to the panel was how these developments will change what law academics do, in terms of research and education. Professor Spender pointed out that crowdfunding is already funding some ANU research and Professor Wheeler that teaching was already largely casualised.

Youth As Researchers

Greetings from the University of Canberra, where

Dr Mark Brennan, UNESCO Chair in Community, Leadership, and Youth Development, and Professor of Leadership and Community Development at Pennsylvania State University, isspeaking on "Opportunities for Research Innovation and Expansion through Youth-led Research". He started by pointing out that "More than one-half of the world’s population is under the age of 25 years, and over a third is under 15." He described "a youth-led research program, which engages youth in topics of concern to them and their communities.

The curriculum materials for the "Youth as Researchers" program are available free online from Pen State University (but no online course):

•  Youth As Researchers Training Manual
•  Youth as Researchers Workbook

However, the concentrations of young people are in poorer countries in South America, the Middle East and Asia, while the curriculum materials have been developed and tested in the USA and Ireland. This appears to be as much an exercise in promoting the value of Social Science in western universities as in helping young people in developing countries.

Youth-led Research

Dr Mark Brennan, UNESCO Chair in Community, Leadership, and Youth Development, and Professor of Leadership and Community Development at Pennsylvania State University, will be speaking on "Opportunities for Research Innovation and Expansion through Youth-led Research" at the University of Canberra, 12:30 pm 14 May 2018.

"More than one-half of the world’s population is under the age of 25 years, and over a third is under 15. The need to actively engage and empower this population has been recognized by major international organizations, NGOs, and local agencies as critical to achieving social, economic, environmental, and political development. Nonetheless, a generalizable, adaptive, and sustainable framework for achieving this global youth citizenship remains elusive. In response to this need, we present a youth-led research program, which engages youth in topics of concern to them and their communities."

Inquiry into Funding Australia's Research

The Australian Parliament is holding an inquiry into funding Australia’s research. Submissions are due by 30 June 2018. I suggest government funding should be conditional on Open Access publishing of the results and researchers receiving start-up training in how to apply their results. The era where researchers did the research and did nothing with it should end. Researchers need to be trained in how to take their work to the community.

"Terms of Reference

The House Standing Committee on Education, Employment and Training will inquire into and report on the efficiency, effectiveness and coherency of Australian Government funding for research, in the following terms:

• The diversity, fragmentation and efficiency of research investment across the Australian Government, including the range of programs, guidelines and methods of assessment of grants;

• The process and administrative role undertaken by research institutions, in particular universities, in developing and managing applications for research funding;

• The effectiveness and efficiency of operating a dual funding system for university research, namely competitive grants and performance-based block grants to cover systemic costs of research; and

• Opportunities to maximise the impact of funding by ensuring optimal simplicity and efficiency for researchers and research institutions while prioritising delivery of national priorities and public benefit.

This inquiry will be focused on federally funded research agencies, their funding mechanisms and university collaborative research. The inquiry will not consider the National Health and Medical Research Council, nor non-federal research funding."

Training for Australia's Offensive Cyber Capability

In the Australian Strategic Policy Institute paper "Australia's Offensive Cyber Capability" ( May 2018), Fergus Hanson an Tom Uren, ask how to build and use the capability. Part of this is simply having trained IT professionals, in and out of uniform available. As well as running courses in "Defensive Cyber Security Operations" (COMP3701), the Australian National University also offerers "Offensive Cyber Security Operations" (COMP3702):

"Offensive Cyber Security operations introduces and exercises a complete range of reverse engineering techniques and attack patterns. Students will also learn and exercise analysis of systems based on minimal information. This is a complete course in cyber attacks which enables students on successful completion to identify and test systems for vulnerabilities without full knowledge or direct access."

As part of the ethics training for ANU IT students I offer a hypothetical on Cyber Warfare over the South China Sea.

Iimproving Health and Education outcomes for Indigenous Australians

Greetings from "Closing the Gap - What are the next steps for improving Health and Education outcomes for Indigenous Australians" at the Australian National University in Canberra. Richard Spencer, Commissioner of Social Policy, Australian Productivity Commission, was the first speaker.

Mr. Spencer discussed his commission's report "Human services in remoteIndigenous communities". The report pointed out that "Service provision in remote Indigenous communities faces challenges including isolation, time-consuming (and often costly) travel, and difficulty recruiting and retaining staff with the necessary skills and capabilities." (p. 265).

I found it disappointing that the report made only one mention of online services and it was negative: "Access to online service alternatives can also be challenging due to a lack of IT infrastructure and, in some cases, a lack of the skills required to utilise those services.". In his PHD thesis, Philip Townsend (p. 26, 2017), points out there has been rapid adoption of mobile devices in remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. Dr. Townsend investigated the use of mobile devices for remote education. Given the problems of isolation, travel cost, recruiting and retaining staff, the Commission could have done more than just dismiss online service alternatives in one sentence.

Reference

Townsend, Philip, 2017 Travelling together and sitting alongside: How might the use of mobile devices enhance the professional learning of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander pre-service teachers in remote communities?, Flinders University, School of Education.  URL https://flex.flinders.edu.au/items/7a690838-1ce2-4a3e-bc1c-510289161e3c/1/?.vi=file&attachment.uuid=eaeb3a0a-8ce3-4dd8-bb3d-33c99a3fa5ef

Australian Government Funding for Regional Study Hubs

One of the new measures in the Australian Government Budget for 2017/2018 is expanded funding for Regional Study Hubs. These are community-owned facilities where students studying by distance education can meet with tutors and other students. As a distance education student myself I felt a need to meet other students face to face. This was noticed decades ago shortly after the Open University UK started correspondence courses: students sought out each other and booked rooms at the nearest educational institution.

The budget has funded  500 sub‑bachelor and 500 bachelor students. It is good to see the inclusion of sub-degree programs, as these are very useful for distance education students, who tend to take longer and drop out more frequently. The regional study hubs have some similarities to the government programs supporting regional tele-centers of the 1990s.

In 2000 I visited the University of WA Albany centre, where as well as the usual STEM subjects, there was a groups of students having a poetry reading via teleconference.

Universities of the Future Are Already Here

Halloran and Friday (2018) have explored four scenarios for the future of Australian universities: Champion University (government supported), Commercial University (financially independent), Disruptor University (micro-certificates for the workplace), Virtual University
(integrated universities and vocational institutes). However, this is not as radical as it might seem. Australia already has elements of all these approaches. I have been teaching into some of their programs, for more than a decade.

Computing is perhaps the discipline leading for providing vocationally relevant globally recognized education. The biggest impediment I see is the lack of education qualifications of university academic staff and government regulations. However, Australia has to be careful not to destroy the very valuable higher education brand it has with international students in any change.

I abandoned teaching face-to-face in 2008 and have been  mostly online since then.  For my own education I tried online university courses in 2011 and then switched to studying completely online internationally in 2013. The idea of turning up to a specific place at a specific time to teach or learn seems a very dated idea.

Reference

Halloran, Lucille & Friday, Catherine. (2018, April). The University of the Future: Can the universities of today lead learning for tomorrow?  Ernst & Young Australia. URL http://cdn.ey.com/echannel/au/en/industries/government---public-sector/ey-university-of-the-future-2030/EY-university-of-the-future-2030.pdf

Studying half or less of a full-time student’s study load is a major non-completion risk

Norton, Cherastidtham and Mackey (2018) found that students studying half or less of a full-time load at university are at risk of not completing. The authors estimate that about 20% of the students commencing a bachelor degree in 2018, will not get the degree. They suggest alerting those considering study of the risk factors. However, I suggest there are many other ways to improve student outcomes.

One counter-intuitive recent finding by Shea and Bidjerano (2018) is that adding some on-line courses improves the completion of otherwise face-to-face campus based students. The optimal mix is between 10% and 60% online, depending on the institution, with the average being 40%. This was for US community colleges and it would be interesting to see if the same applies in Australia. It may be that the highly scaffolded nature of online courses helps struggling students, or it may be just that they can do an online course when their only other option would have been to terminate their studies.

Another way to improve university completion is with nested programs. With this option a student earns a sub-degree qualification after the equivalent of as little as six months study. They can use that qualification to help get a better job, and come back to study more later. It doesn't matter if the student takes eight, or more, years to earn a degree, as they have useful qualifications before then. Also it is much easier to be a student, and to teach students, who are already working in the field they are studying. The students can use their workplace experience in assignments and apply what they learn immediately. This might be a way to improve university completion statistics, with those who previously were recorded as degree non-completions instead being sub-degree completions.

One option I have found useful as a student myself is online study part time, with one course at a time and three or four courses a year. By deleting the usual long university holiday breaks between courses (which are largely irrelevant to part time students), it is possible to complete three or four courses a year. This allows a student to undertake a half full-time load, without the added burden of two courses at once.

The use of scaffolding in courses and on-line support for students between courses, use of e-portfolios and non-conventional assessment helps. At the micro level the student, especially the part time student, needs to know what they need to do right now. Also it is useful to provide an option where the student can document their learning and earn credit without having to complete a formal course.

Reference

Norton, A., Cherastidtham, I., and Mackey, W. (2018).
Dropping out: the benefits and costs of trying university. Grattan Institute. URL https://grattan.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/904-dropping-out-the-benefits-and-costs-of-trying-university.pdf

SHEA, Peter; BIDJERANO, Temi. Online Course Enrollment in Community College and Degree Completion: The Tipping Point. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, [S.l.], v. 19, n. 2, may. 2018. ISSN 1492-3831. Available at: <http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/3460/4568>. Date accessed: 05 May. 2018. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v19i2.3460. 

Online Courses Improve Student Outcomes

Shea and Bidjerano (2018) found that US community college students are more likely to succeed with a mix of face-to-face and online courses. The study compared 46,000 students at 30 community colleges of the State University of New York (SUNY). The authors suggest students should "... enroll in face-to-face courses primarily and supplement these courses with online courses ...".

For the colleges overall, students had the best completion rates with 40% online courses. For institutions with higher completion rates the optimum is 60% online. Most surprisingly, students at institutions with a lower overall completion rates should still do 10% online courses.

The authors don't present an explanation as to why a mix of face-to-face and online courses improves outcomes. It may be that the highly scaffolded nature of online courses helps struggling students. However, it may be just that  students with conflicting demands on their time, an online course is the only way to keep studying. Some of my ICT Sustainability students have been in this category, where they were not able to be on campus and so their options were are an online course, or no-completion of their degree.

What the study doesn't say is what proportion of the learning for the face-to-face courses is actually online. An Australian higher education course labeled "face-to-face" is likely to have a significant proportion of online learning. This supports my rule of thumb is that about 80% of Higher Education can be done online.

Reference

SHEA, Peter; BIDJERANO, Temi. Online Course Enrollment in Community College and Degree Completion: The Tipping Point. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, [S.l.], v. 19, n. 2, may. 2018. ISSN 1492-3831. Available at: <http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/3460/4568>. Date accessed: 05 May. 2018. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v19i2.3460.

Technology for a Human Future

Greetings from the Great Hall of the Australian National University in Canberra, where Lama Nachman, Director of the Intel Anticipatory Computing Lab, is speaking on "Liberating Technology: the future of human agency". Nachman has an impressive career researching specialized sensor networks. However they also argue that the sensors already in smartphones are not being used to their true potential, to help people. The key to this, they suggest, is context, if the application knows what people are doing at the time, they can provide more useful help.

Canberra into Space

Greetings from the UNSW Canberra Campus, hosting the  Canberra Innovation Network's First Wednesday event. The host told us about UNSW Canberra Space, their motto should be "It is rocket science!". There were then eleven sixty second pitches. If you have a bright idea and have thought about turning it into a product, you should come along to such a pitch night at your local startup center. The room has a positive vibe.But the most useful part of the evening are not the formal presentations (which are short), but talking to people. I am interested in how to teach innovation online to graduate students and happened to meet someone enrolled in such a course.

Training the Big Data Trainer

Greetings from the Australian National University in Canberra, where I am attending "Powering up your 2018 (data skills) training". This is provided by Australian National Data Service (ANDS), National eResearch Collaboration Tools and Resources project (Nectar) and  Research Data Services (RDS). The idea is to help those who train researchers in using data repositories.

Data repositories are used not just by researchers, but also for teaching. The Atlas of Living Australia is also used by schools.

One of the problems with data repositories of data is motivating researchers to learn to use them and use them. The researcher tends to be focused on their PhD, or project and then getting the next grant. Making their data available for others to use may not be seen as helping with this (although researchers now get some credit for publishing data).

ps: The instructor perhaps was having a dig at me just now saying "You don't want people playing with computers and not paying attention", but obviously I am. ;-)