Implications of Body Worn Computers

In 2012 I was interviewed by Alexander Hayes for his PhD thesis on wearable computing. This has been published as  "The Socioethical Implications of Body Worn Computers: An Ethnographic Study" (University of Woolongong, 2020). He discusses concerns over the use of Google Glass (including y own), how the use of the technology may be normalized, the use of the body as an interface, the role of context.  My post on wearing Google Glass ("First Impressions of Wearing Google Glass",March 26, 2014") is cited in the thesis, which makes me wonder if I should list that as a formal academic publication.

Reference

Hayes, Alexander, The Socioethical Implications of Body Worn Computers: An Ethnographic Study, Doctor of Philosophy thesis, School of Computing and Information Technology, University of Wollongong, 2020. https://ro.uow.edu.au/theses1/853

China Upgrades the Education Action Plan for the Belt and Road Program

Greetings from the Carbon Energy for the Asia-Pacific Project Workshop at the Australian National University. One topic is the role of renewable energy and carbon emission reduction in China's Belt and Road Program. However, the plan is not just abut building power stations, there is also an Education Action Plan for the Belt and Road Program. The Australian Department of Education issued a summary of an update of the plan in June and changes to education policy. China plans to share lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic and continue to support developing nations. One aspect which might be of interest to Australian higher education is that Chinese vocational training teachers will have more scope to study overseas. This has relevance to renewable energy as the cost of wind and solar equipment has now dropped so low that labor for installation is a major part. There is scope for specialized skills to speed installation and so lower cost.

Back on Campus at a Hybrid Event Combatting Global Warming

Greetings from the Super-floor of the Marie Reay Teaching Centre at the Australian National University. I am taking part in a Carbon Energy for the Asia-Pacific Project Workshop.  This is my first time at a face to face activity on campus for months, due to COVID-19. The workshop is in hybrid mode, with some people in the room and some remote, via Zoom video conference. I had the option of participating from home (appropriately I am classified as one of the "cloud" participants in the project). But I have not seen my colleagues for months and I wanted to come in.  So far the technology has worked fine.

The Marie Reay building is suited to social distancing, as the floors are flat and the furniture is movable. The superfloor has been set out with tables which normally accommodate seven people (as shown in the stock image). Today each two rectangular tables have been pushed together to a make large square one, with one or two people on each side. This reduces the room's capacity in the already low density cabaret format by half.

A hand held microphone was used for audience input. This presented the problem of sterilizing the microphone between users. Microphone on a stands at fixed location would be an alternative (with an optional foot switch). A telepresence robot would be a more complex option.

This workshop is using the traditional format with a series of speakers with slides, each followed by questions from the audience. There is a slight modification, with the MC inviting remote participants to turn on their microphone to ask a question, or post it to the chat. The image of the speaker is not being transmitted, just slides. Switching from a presenter in the room to a remote one required some verbal negotiation, much like using a two-way radio. This slowed down proceedings a little, but is perhaps a good thing as it can at times be difficult for the audience to keep up with highly technical presenters.

As for the content of the workshop, one point of interest is that large renewable energy projects on indigenous land will, ironically, be unable to provide power to the local community. There will be mega watts of power being exported, but none can be provided from the large systems for the locals. The obvious solution is to require those putting in large projects to provide small independent local systems. The problem then is how are these systems maintained?

More Relivant Higher Educaiton Ranking Systems Needed

Australian education consultancy Studymove has pointed out that the higher the QS World University Ranking for an Australian university, the higher the international tuition fees charged. The correlation applies across fields and levels of study, but is least for education studies. The consultants speculate that high unemployment may result in students selecting institutions and programs with higher raking for employment outcomes. However, I expect many students don't look past the overall ranking of a university to examine individual measures. The current ranking schemes are weighted towards academic quality and research output, although these are not relevant to most students.

Like many such ranking systems, QS is heavily skewed to academic reputation. In the case of QS, the largest proportion of the overall measure is based on a survey of academics. Other raking systems use research papers published as a measure of academic quality. However, the research at a university has little effect on the quality of education a student receives. Most students are not planning to be researchers and few who complete research degrees end up in research jobs. Researchers don't make particularly good teachers anyway and this emphasis on research may be resulting in students making poor education choices.

Webometrics uses measures of openness, as well as quality, to provide a more relevant ranking of universities. This relies on readily available information, rather than surveys, which has the advantage of allowing inclusion of many more institution. In particular Webometrics includes thousands of vocational institutions which are excluded from most university ranking systems. Australian has only 43 universities, but Webometrics lists another 150 non-university institutions. 

Despite the different measures used, Australian universities outrank the non-university institutions on the Webometrics scoring and the raking of universities is not very different from QS. This suggests it should be possible to create new rankings of universities at low cost, using a similar approach to Webometrics.

The Webometrics methodology, like that of QS, is heavily weighted towards academic quality. Overall, 35% of the measure is based on papers cited in research publications which perhaps explains why universities are at the top of the list, outranking vocational institutions. 

The ordering of the universities is different to QS, but the same universities feature near the top of both lists. Near the bottom of the universities in the Webometrics ranking are a few large state government vocational intuitions: TAFE NSW, TAFE Queensland, Adelaide Institute of TAFE and Canberra Instituter of Technology. Just one private for-profit vocational provider also features: Open Colleges, which has a 100 year history in correspondence education.

I pasted the Webometrics list of Australian universities to a spreadsheet, and reweighed the scores by deleting the excellence measure. The leading universities remained at the top of the list, but a few vocational institutions crept up a little: Open Colleges from 41 to 39th place, TAFE NSW from 43 to 40, TAFE Queensland 46 to 44, Adelaide Institute of TAFE 45,  Kangan Institute 49. Canberra Instituter of Technology dropped one place from 49 to 50.

Contract Cheating in Online Assessment

Associate Professor Phill Dawson, from the Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning at Deakin University talked at the ANU Centre for Learning and Teaching (CLT) on Contract Cheating in Online Assessment. His new book "Defending Assessment Security in a Digital World: Preventing E-Cheating and Supporting Academic Integrity in Higher Education", is due out in October.  

Professor Dawson surprised me by being mildly positive about the use of online invigilated examinations, while pointing out that the companies which provide these services were reluctant to have them independently tested. He was amused by my suggestion that a chromakey bodysuit could hide a helped in the background. ;-)

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Flip Australian Higher Education Before the Next White Swan Event

Many recent discussions of Australian education I have taken part in  have  the theme of what to do after COVID-19. The sense is that things have been bad, but under control: what of the changes brought in as an emergency measure should be kept in the long term? However, I suggest Australian universities should not  assume there will be a period of stability in which to gradually introduce changes. COVID-19 is just a foretaste of far more difficult challenges to come in the next few months and years, with technology, and geopolitics forcing changes to how, what, where and who we teach. There can be a larger sudden interruption to international student access to Australian campuses in the next few months, and in the next few years new alternatives to studying in Australia for both domestic and international students (Worthington, 2014). 

Australian universities should now flip their educational offerings, along with their teaching. With flipped learning students are encouraged to study material online before attending a class. In the same way, students should be offered online study, before attending a campus. Universities do not have to abandon the campuses they have invested so much in recently,  just make minor tweaks to boost online learning

E-learning has been proven over at least a decade. It has been shown possible to produce high quality, active learning courses and blend them with campus instruction. This has been done with mixed teams of domestic and international students, undertaking practical projects online together, to meet professional accreditation requirements. It is possible to teach staff how to do this across the Australian HE sector.

I have been teaching online since 2009. Most of my students were happy with this model and get similar results to their classroom courses. However, many academics are reluctant to undertake the training required to teach this way and students have been reluctant to sign up for online courses, seeing them as inferior.

One way to make online learning more attractive is to offer it as part of a package, with campus instruction. As an example, for computer project students last year I designed a learning module with asynchronous delivery. This has automated quizzes, discussion forums, videos, ebook and peer assessment. But added to this are face to face workshops, held in a purpose-built flat floor classroom  (Worthington, 2020).

The blended model ran for two semesters in 2019. When COVID-19 struck in 2020, the workshops were moved to Zoom. There was no need to change the course materials, activities, or assessment, as an emergency online contingency had been planned for (Worthington, 2014 & 2016). There is the option of using a hybrid model in the future, with some students in the classroom and some online. Also recent online hackathons I have helped mentor for the Australian National University, Australian Computer Society, and the Australian and NZ Defence Forces show promise.

Academics' reluctance to learn to teach online can be addressed by offering teacher training part of a degree, before they become academics. Rather than being seen as just a training course, teaching can be promoted as part of the skill-set of every profession. Our tutors can study teaching as part of their degree program and pay the usual course fees to do so, at the same time they are paid to tutor. Tutors not enrolled in a degree can receive a micro-credential.

The key, I suggest, is not to focus on moving courses online, as that is a relatively simple task. A bigger challenge is to have programs that are more than just a collection of "courses" and offer students vocationally relevant training, with flexibility. I discussed this last week in my last talk in Canada on "Higher education after COVID-19". In my last talk I described COVID-19 as a White Swan event: one they were warned of but failed to prepare for. Some may dispute they were warned, but after COVID-19, all universities must understand that the flow of international students to Australian campuses may suddenly stop again in the next year. In the longer term, there will be new international competition both for Australian domestic students and international ones.

The Australian Government and university leadership may not act in time, so I suggest individual university academics should individually prepare for the new higher education environment. They can ensure they gain skills to teach in in new ways, which may require they spend their own time and money learning. Also academics should look to set up new companies, and encourage their students, to provide educational services. This can be done in the startup centers set up on and around our campuses. Some might argue that our academics should concentrate on their day jobs, but most of those are going to disappear as the business of education changes over the coming months and years.

References

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

Worthington, T. (2014, August). Chinese and Australian students learning to work together online proposal to expand the New Colombo Plan to the online environment. In 2014 9th International Conference on Computer Science & Education (pp. 164-168). IEEE. URL https://digitalcollections.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/11724/1/Worthington%20Chinese%20and%20Australian%20students%20learning%202014.pdf

Worthington, T. (2017). Tom Worthington's MEd(ED) ePortfolio: Conclusion, Athabasca University. IEEE. URL http://www.tomw.net.au/masters_eportfolio/conclusion.shtml

Worthington, T. (2020, June). Blend and Flip for Teaching Communication Skills to Final Year International Computer Science Students. Paper accepted for the IEEE International Conference on Teaching, Assessment and Learning for Engineering (TALE), 10-13 December 2019, Yogyakarta, Indonesia. URL https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/204833

IEEE Standard for Learning Metadata Update

Greetings from the IEEE Standard for Learning Metadata Kickoff Meeting (P2881) being held online. The standard defines a data model to keep track of e-learning content Including the learning style it is for. The standard, was released in 2002 and is due for a refresh. One possibility is to generalize to learning "resources" rather than objects, with more details of what the learning is for, rather than technical files which make it up. It is a good time to consider this with e-learning suddenly being used on a large scale due to  COVID-19. As with any standard, one of the tasks is to work out why we are doing this: what is the problem we are trying to solve? An example would be micro-credentials, where there would be many more small components to learning to keep track of.

The meeting time is not exactly convenient for me (4:30am in Canberra), but there are there are 24 participants around the world, so it can't be good for everyone. This is a formal groups with membership, an agenda and voting (I am an individual IEEE). I haven't taken part in a formal meeting for years and the chair is showing considerable patience going through the process online. This may seem cumbersome but is necessary for standards meetings as passions can run and there was conflict with the previous group (I was on the balloting group in 2002, but did not attend previously).

The meeting is using WebEX, which I have not used for years and had to dial in for the audio. There does not appear to be a Linux client, so I am using the web interface in Firefox, but might use the Android client next time.

Replace Old Lecture Theatres with Energy Efficient Flexible Teaching Spaces

The Australian National University is conducting a public consultation on "How can we reduce ANU contributions to climate change?". I submitted a suggestion to Shift 80% of ANU Learning Online to Reduce CO2 Emissions, under the Behavioral change theme. But I was also asked to contribute suggestions to the Energy and buildings theme, so have proposed to replace lecture theaters with flexible spaces. 

Idea title

Replace Old Lecture Theatres with Energy Efficient Flexible Teaching Spaces

Idea Description

ANU's older lecture theatres have tiered floors with fixed seats. These can be replaced with flexible classrooms suiting modern education techniques, and which are more energy efficient. Modern teaching techniques emphasise student discussion and teamwork, which is difficult to do when all the seats are fixed facing forward. The Marie Reay Teaching Centre in ANU's Kambri precinct, has flat floors made of engineered sustainable plantation timber, with furniture on wheels. This has been used for flipped blended learning (Worthington, 2020). As students undertake more study outside the classroom with this approach, less teaching space will be required, reducing energy use further.

Reference

Worthington, T. (2020, June). Blend and Flip for Teaching Communication Skills to Final Year International Computer Science Students. Paper accepted for the IEEE International Conference on Teaching, Assessment and Learning for Engineering (TALE), 10-13 December 2019, Yogyakarta, Indonesia. URL https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/204833

We can reduce a universty's contribution to climate change through e-learning

The Australian National University is conducting a public consultation on "How can we reduce ANU contributions to climate change?".

There are seven themes, each with the opportunity to contribute ideas, via a web page and video conference:

1. Leadership and targets
2. Energy and buildings
3. Travel
4. Behavioral change
5. Removing atmospheric greenhouse gases
6. Finance, investment and purchasing
7. Integrating below zero operations, research and teaching

Under the theme, Behavioral Change, I have suggested more use of e-learning, to allow more students to be educated without increasing the buildings required, while also reducing carbon emissions from less travel:

Idea title

Shift 80% of ANU Learning Online to Reduce CO2 Emissions

Idea Description

ANU's Vision for Excellence in Learning and Teaching only requires minor tweaking to boost online learning, without abandoning the campus. The average student needs to be on campus for about 20% of their study. By facilitating the other 80% of study off campus, the ANU can reduce its emissions per student, and also help students reduce their carbon footprint through reduced travel.

An example of such an online course is, appropriately enough, "ICT Sustainability" (COMP7310), first offered online in 2009 (Worthington, 2012). This course teaches students to estimate and reduce carbon emissions though the use of computers and the internet. Students undertake the course wherever in the world they happen to be.

Online learning can be part of an attractive package, with campus instruction. As an example, ANU TechLauncher students have been learning this way (Worthington, 2020).

References

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

Worthington, T. (2020, June). Blend and Flip for Teaching Communication Skills to Final Year International Computer Science Students. Paper accepted for the IEEE International Conference on Teaching, Assessment and Learning for Engineering (TALE), 10-13 December 2019, Yogyakarta, Indonesia. URL https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/204833

Higher Education in the Post-pandemic World

An online symposium 'This changes everything?'! Australia and the post-pandemic world is being hosted by the Australian Studies Institute at the Australian National University, 22 October 2020. I have offered to speak on "Higher Education in the Post-pandemic World" and will develop my presentation here, in a series of blog posts.

The organizers first asked for an abstract (below) and then a 5 to 8 minute video. The videos will be made available two weeks before the symposium. On the day, there are one hour sessions scheduled with five "papers" each, so about ten minutes per paper. Each presenter has been asked to include two or three questions, or statements, to promote discussion. This is an interesting attempt to translate the symposium format to the online world.

In a traditional academic symposium, the presenter reads their entire paper word by word. With a literate writer, who is also an engaging speaker, on an interesting topic, this can be spellbinding, but often it is very tedious. It will be interesting to see if the online format, with pre-recorded videos and the questions is successful in creating a useful discussion.

I am not sure what I can fit in a 5 to 8 minute video. So to start I produced a video with just the abstract, using Vidnami, synthetic speech and Creative Commons Licensed images. The abstract took just over one minute to read, so there was room for about seven more paragraphs.

 

This work started as a series of six talks in the Microlearning Series curated by Manisha Khetarpal at Maskwacis Cultural College in Canada. You can read the original talks, as well as the revised five minute version for the symposium: Video, Notes and Script

Higher Education in the Post-pandemic World

Mr Tom Worthington, Honorary Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science, The Australian National University

Abstract

Like many educators, my world changed suddenly in early 2020. I was called to an emergency meeting of the staff of the Australian National University, College of Engineering and Computer Science. We were told that due to COVID-19 many of our international students would be unable to get to campus: could we teach them online? There was a moment of shocked silence, then a roar of questions: “How many? How long for? Will they have Internet access? What about assessment?” It happened for my Masters of Education I looked at how to provide online education to international students at a research intensive university. Also I had worked in emergency planning at the Australian Department of Defence, so had some relevant experience. But it has been a challenging year. What are the lessons learned for educating professionals online? How will this change higher education for domestic and international students into the future?

Shift to Remote Work and Study in March 2020

"The advice from our ANU medical experts is clear: to control the spread of COVID-19 we must take tough action ... so effective tomorrow Thursday 26 March, all our campuses will shift to remote work and study." From the Vice Chancellor of the Australian National University, Professor Brian P. Schmidt AC FAA FRS, 25 March 2020.

On 6 February 2020 I attended an emergency staff meeting at the Australian National University where we were asked if we could quickly switch to teaching online. Some of our students and staff were overseas so unable to return to campus. The Vice Chancellor announced first a "pause", then a wholesale shift to online teaching and working from 26 March. 

Online Teaching for COVID-19 Worked

• Course materials and assessment using the existing Moodle Learning Management System
• Project group work using the existing project tools, such as Slack
• Face to face student/staff interaction replaced with video conferencing (Zoom).

The Australian National University already had a well supported suite of online learning tools, based around the Moodle Learning Management System. This continued to be used to deliver documents, pre-recorded videos and assessment tasks to students. Moodle was also used to provide students with quizzes and text based asynchronous forums to aid their learning Computer science students continued to use project management and communication tools, such as GitHub and Slack, for working in teams on group projects (Worthington, 2020). COVID-19 forced the replacement of face to face team meetings, tutorials and workshops with video conference tools, such as Zoom.

Higher education after COVID-19: Online Plus Campus

Wall mounted LCD screens & desks on wheels at ANU Marie Reay Teaching Centre

One possible future for higher education is Online Plus. There can still be campuses with classrooms, but with flexible flat floor rooms, like those in the the Australian National University's Marie Reay Teaching Center. The core of the curriculum will be online for delivery in asynchronous mode, so a typical student can spend about 80% of their time off campus, learning while working anywhere the world. 

Pathways to Work, Training and Further Education

 "Senior secondary certification requirements and the way learning is packaged should be restructured so that students are not presented with a binary choice between vocational or higher education pathways." (Shergold and others,  2020)

A recent report to the Council of Australian Governments lead by Shergold (2020) recommended not presenting students with a binary choice between vocational and university education. COVID-19 has forced much of secondary and higher education online and this provides the opportunity to consider how to integrate them better and provide them more flexibly. Australian secondary education can be blended into the vocational education system and that  into university.

The Degree of the Future is Like a Car Platform

MQB Platform for VW, Audi, SEAT, Škoda, coupes, hatchbacks, saloons, station wagons, convertibles, MPVs, SUVs, and panel vans (Ra Boe / Wikipedia)

International vehicle manufacturers use one engineering "platform" to produce many different models for customers around the world. This approach can be used by universities to provide internationally standardized qualifications. These can be nested to allow from a three week micro-credential to a multiyear doctorate. The basic online curriculum can be available with blended, hybrid, face to face, and work integrating learning options.

Global Professional Standards

Excerpt from ACS Certified Professional Certificate

An example of the platform approach is the International Professional Practice Partnership (IP3) under the Seoul Accord for certifying computer professionals. The Australian Computer Society (ACS) certifies computer professional under the scheme, along with other nations, such as the Canadian Information Processing Society (CIPS). Engineering qualifications are similarly accredited under the Washington Accord. This provides a level of international standardization of the skills and knowledge required in professions, and a guide to university curricular. Universities are not required to teach in the same way, as long as graduates have the required attributes. Like a car maker's platform, such global agreements take many years to produce, but once agreed, they increase the quality and reliability of global education.

Synchronous learning in an asynchronous matrix

Fighting Pandemics virtual hackathon, August 8, 2020, by the ANU Humanitarian Innovation Society (ANU HISoc), with the Clinton Global Initiative University and IBM 

Classroom activities which require student interaction and  group work were easily able to transition from face to face to online mode in 2020. Examples of high interaction student group activities at the Australian National University are the TechLauncher computer science projects, Innovation ACT entrepreneurial competitions, and hackerthons. An example of the latter is the Fighting Pandemics virtual hackathon, run in August by the university's Humanitarian Innovation Society, with the Clinton Global Initiative University and IBM.

The transition from classroom to online was made possible by delivering synchronous learning embedded in an asynchronous matrix. This form of flipped learning uses a text message system, such as Slack, before, during and after video conference sessions, using a platform such as Zoom. Students are given a series of challenges, each with a deadline. The deadlines are used to synchronize the asynchronous communication  (Worthington & Wu, 2015).

COVID-19 & Geopolitics Changing Higher Education

Infographic: Learning
through Belt and Road,
Ma Chi, China Daily,
2017-05-10 06:07

China's Education Action Plan for the Belt and Road Program offers assistance to students in developing nations (Worthington, 2014). The Chinese government is now also promoting online education as a result of COVID-19. International tensions may limit future student travel, without warning, just as COVID-19 did. 

For most students a campus experience will remain attractive, but only for a small part of their study. Australian universities should therefore offer an online option to domestic and international students, if they wish to remain a viable education option. Universities which require attendance for no good reason will find students voting with their smart-phones and taking their business online, elsewhere. 

References

1. Chandran, R. (2010, May). National University of Singapore's Campus-Wide ELearning Week. In Global Learn (pp. 2062-3302). Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE). URL https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/blog.nus.edu.sg/dist/0/119/files/2011/03/national-university-of-singapores-campus-wide-elearning-week.pdf
2. Shergold P., Calma, T., Russo, S., Walton, P., Westacott, J., Zoellner, J. and O’Reilly, P. (2020, 17 June). Looking to the future – Report of the review of senior secondary pathways, into work, further education and training, for the Education Council of the Council of Australian Governments (COAG). URL https://uploadstorage.blob.core.windows.net/public-assets/education-au/pathways/Final%20report%20-%2018%20June.pdf
3. Worthington, T. (2020). The Higher Education Whisperer on COV-19 (Blog). URL https://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/search/label/COVID19
4. Worthington, T. (2020, April). Responding to the Coronavirus Emergency with e-Learning, Athabasca University. Video URL https://youtu.be/CUiVH_g4PL4 Text URL https://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/2020/04/responding-to-coronavirus-emergency.html
5. Worthington, T. (2020, June). Blend and Flip for Teaching Communication Skills to Final Year International Computer Science Students. Paper accepted for the IEEE International Conference on Teaching, Assessment and Learning for Engineering (TALE), 10-13 December 2019, Yogyakarta, Indonesia. URL https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/204833
6. Worthington, T. (2018, December). Blended Learning for the Indo-Pacific. In 2018 IEEE International Conference on Teaching,Assessment, and Learning for Engineering (TALE) (pp. 861-865). IEEE. URL https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/148733
7. Worthington, T. (2017). Digital Teaching In Higher Education: Designing E-learning for International Students of Technology,Innovation and the Environment (ebook). URL http://www.tomw.net.au/digital_teaching/
8. Worthington, T., & Wu, H. (2015, July). Time-shifted learning: Merging synchronous and asynchronous techniques for e-learning. In 2015 10th International Conference on Computer Science & Education (ICCSE) (pp. 434-437). IEEE. URL http://hdl.handle.net/1885/13554
9. Worthington, T. (2014, August). Chinese and Australian students learning to work together online proposal to expand the New Colombo Plan to the online environment. In 2014 9th International Conference on Computer Science & Education (pp. 164-168). IEEE. URL: https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/11724
10. Worthington, T. (2012, July). A Green computing professional education course online: Designing and delivering a course in ICT sustainability using Internet and eBooks. In 2012 7th International Conference on Computer Science & Education (ICCSE) (pp. 263-266). IEEE.

The video contains images that were used under a Creative Commons License. https://link.attribute.to/cc/1559254

Zoom Phone App Uses Less Data Than Desktop

Recently I had to join a Zoom conference from the roadside, for which I used the Android phone app. To my surprise this used less data than the desktop computer application. Without video it ran at about 30 kbps and with 80 kbps. The desktop application uses 50 to 150kbps. Also it takes some discipline to keep the data rate down on the desktop, by not making the window too big, whereas the phone doesn't have a window sizing feature so you can't get it wrong. Those on slow links, or limited data plans might consider using the mobile app. Of course there is an even smaller data option: use Zoom's dial-in option, but then you get no chat or video.

How do you like remote lectures now?

My student needs volunteers for a focus group to improve online learning by blending synchronous and asynchronous techniques:

 

How do you like remote lectures now?

Focus Group Participants Wanted

Help us improve online learning experiences!

We are looking for people who:

- has taken remote-delivered courses last semester
- are currently enrolled in ANU or other university
- are aged 18 – 32 years

What do we expect you to do:

- attend the first 15-minute introductory zoom session
- occasionally engage in an online focus group forum for a week (est. 5 / Sep – 11 / Sep)

For any questions or concerns, please contact Hangyeul Lee via the project website (https://hangyeul.wixsite.com/asls)

The ethical aspects of this research have been approved by ANU Human Ethics Committee under protocol 2020/001.