Simon Chan is first up, talking about their product having to meet Microsoft User Interface standards.
Adam Cooper and Brigitta (Bri) Norton will then talk on the Digital Transformation Agency’s Digital Service Standard.
Simon Chan is first up, talking about their product having to meet Microsoft User Interface standards.
Adam Cooper and Brigitta (Bri) Norton will then talk on the Digital Transformation Agency’s Digital Service Standard.
I am assisting with two sessions at the symposium: "Learning Systems: Canvas for WIL, Virtuous Loop", and "Accreditation requirements & Ungrading WIL". The "Virtuous Loop" is something some of my colleagues tell me they know about, so I will leave that to them.
ePortfolios
This then raises the question of what other tools we can use to help the student with WIL. Given I am writing this during an ePortfolios Australia session, the most obvious is an ePortfolio. Canvas has an ePortfolio tool called "Folio". However, this is unlikely to have adequate versioning features to be usable. To be of use, we need to know when the student added what to their portfolio, including every edit, for "show your work". Also we need to track the contributions of individual students in group projects, where they are assembling a jointly developed document. It is likely we will need to use tools like GitHub for this purpose. That will require training for non-computing students, unused to the concepts inherent in such tools.
Bodies such as the Australian Computer Society and Engineers Australia, accredit university courses. Common requirements of accreditation is for the student to have some group, work and project experience. I mentor interns who work individually at a real workplace and tutor group project students who work on a real project for a real client. In both cases there is scaffolding of the experience, to make it into a course. There are a few lectures, but the emphasis is on meeting with a mentor/tutor regularly. There are also assessed tasks to complete. These tasks are designed to be relevant to real world experience. Typically the students start by negotiating what they are going to do and submit a statement of work document, agreed with the client, for assessment. Also they typically end with a reflective work on what they did and learned from the experience. In between there are progress reports. In the case of internships, the assessor relies on reports from the client, as it is not feasible for them to assess the actual work the student does. In the case of group projects, the assessor may have more access to the work product, but even ... oops time is up ...
At this point, as per the PARE process, we stopped writing and had a few minutes discussion. I shared this document, up to this point. We discussed how to collect notes on what we had been doing for future use. This is very relevant to a discussion of how students document and provide evidence of, what they did in WIL. For assessment purposes we need that evidence, but it can't be too burdensome, for the student, their client, or the assessors. Ideally the evidence is captured as a byproduct of the WIL. This happens reasonably naturally for computer project students, who use online tools common in industry for software development. These tools timestamp every contribution by every team member, and provide statistics on their overall contribution.
Grading WIL
Some WIL is not integrated. The student is required to undertake a set amount of work experience. A supervisor attests the student did the work. There is no detailed analysis of what they did, or how well. At the other extreme, a program like Techlauncher has assessors examining what each student does every week, and in more detail at checkpoints through the year.
Typically in vocational education, students are assessed on a pass/fail (Competent/Not yet competent) basis. Even if there is a numerical grading, this is reduced to pass/fail at the end of the unit of study. The logic behind this is that the student is being assessed as being able to do a job. In some industries this is a legal requirement: no ticket, no job. In contrast a university student is typically graded numerically on a 100 point scale, which is then reduced to a 4 to 7 level grade. The student's grades are aggregated to give a Grade Point Average on a 4 or 7 point scale.
The course results and GPAs may be used internally as a requirement for students to progress in their program, or to apply for advanced study, but are of little or no value to outside employers. Given that WIL doesn't involve they type of learning of a typical academic course, they use of 100 point or even 7 point scale for assessment seem very artificial. The purpose of the exercise is not for the student to be excellent at working in a workplace, they can't be expected to achieve that ... opps time is up again.
Having written about the topic stream of consciousness style, it is time to try to make some short, hopefully helpful, comments on WIL:
LMS for Scaffolding
A learning management system is useful for providing structure for WIL. The unfamiliar and fragmented nature of WIL can be confusing for both students and staff. The LMS can provide a step by step checklist of who needs to do what, when, & a catalog of the tools and guides they need.
Not Too Integrated
An LMS is not designed for WIL. A useful approach is to use the LMS to tell the student what they need to do, then have them go off and do it with specialised tools, but bring the evidence of what they did back to the LMS for assessment, and feedback.
Most of the evidence of learning outcomes can achieved work products, rather than specially created academic artifacts. As an example, the client or supervisor can be asked to rate the student's performance. The work plans and output can be directly assessed. The tools used to record the student's work can be used to verify they were actually doing the work. As an example, tools such as GitHub record each time each team member contributed to the repository, timestamped.
Accreditation requirements & Ungrading WIL
EduTech Asia 2025 is in Singapore 4 TO 6 November. The preliminary agenda is now out. Here are my selections from the Higher Education stream:
10:00 Revolutionise learning with competency-based design thinking
14:00 Blended learning 2.0! Designing a community of inquiry to enhance student learning
11:00 Panel: Can AI and data create a more personalised learning approach?
11:45 Fireside chat: The rise of the AI tutoring technology
14:10 Case study presentation: Enhancing teaching experiences through Nanyang Polytechnic’s competency-based learning approach
Greetings from the Professional Standards Board of the Australian Computer Society (ACS), meeting in Adelaide. I jokingly told some academic colleagues that I was at a meeting to redesign the Australian degree. This is a slight exaggeration. Professional bodies, such as ACS, set accreditation standards. Universities and other educational bodies can choose to be accredited, but to do so must meet the requirements. As a result what professional standards are set influences what is in degrees. A current, and ongoing issue, is the balance between practical skills for immediate use, and what will be needed over a career. Another is how to improve, and formally recognise, learning which takes place outside the institution.
Some other issues are AI Adoption, and Digital Skills (such as DigComp 2.0). Also hanging over everything is cyber security.
ps: In terms of how moden meetings are run, while all the broad are physically present, we still have video conferencing running, for some staff giving presentations from offices in other cities. Even though I am in the room, I found it useful to join the video conference (with no sound), so I can see presentations up close on my laptop.
At Singapore FinTech Festival 2022 |
I have decided to stop reviewing papers for academic journals (I will still do for conferences I am involved with). The reason is that the academic publishing system is exploitative. Reviewers don't get paid, or any other form of compensation, for reviewing. In theory this is something you do, as you will then have your papers reviewed. But in practice there are many free riders. My gesture is a tiny one, but then I remember when I decided to stop giving lectures and that gained traction.
Authors submit papers and expect others to review them, but are not required to review. The authors receive a benefit from published papers, and a financial benefit when this results in a job, or research grant. Some publications are for profit and the published receives revenue from subscribers. The ones missing out from this are reviewers, who get no credit, or payment. So I will stop doing this.
The system could be easily fixed. Reviewers could receive a voucher for each four papers they review, entitling them to priority processing for one paper submitted. For for-profit publications, they could simply be paid.
Publications could also invest in automated tools to take some of the drudgery out of reviewing. This would check for plagiarism (especially self plagiarism, where autoes submit the same paper, or ones with just a few changes, to multiple publications). Systems could also check references in papers.
This week I have been on training to use the Canvas Learning Management System (LMS). I have been using Moodle for 17 years, but Canvas doesn't look that different. At the same time I have been asked to contribute to a local event at ANU College of ANU College of Systems & Society on how to improve Work Integrated Learning (WIL). As I happened to be learning Canvas I have volunteered to lead a session on how it can be used for WIL. As I have been involved with accreditation for the Australian Computer Society (ACS) I also volunteer to contribute to a session on that. Here I am collecting my thoughts on the topic.
There are specialised systems to help with experiential learning. Some of these are very specialised. As an example, I provided some advice on the development of the Student Practice Evaluation Form – Revised (SPEF-R) at The University of Queensland. This is used for occupational therapy students on placements. It has been used across Australia and is very useful for that purpose, but not applicable to other professional training.
A LMS can't help with the difficult task of finding places for students to get experience. But they can help provide students with the familiar structure of a "course" with deliverables. Also underappreciated is to give staff some structure. These can be the workplace clients or supervisors of the students, but also the academic staff mentoring and assessment them.
One idea which came up with Canvas training about quizzes was to use such simple tests to help orientate the students. I asked Microsoft Copilot to create a set of multiple choice questions, based on the ANU Techlauncher public description. Here is one of the questions:
Q: What is the primary goal of the TechLauncher program?
A To develop advanced coding skills
B To foster teamwork and project management skills
C To learn about the latest technology trends
D To prepare students for academic research
This may seems trivial, but it can be difficult to get students (and staff) out of the habit of seeing learning as about attending lectures.
I am most familiar with the ANU School of Computing's Techlauncher and Internships. Techlauncher has groups of students working for a client, whereas internships are individual. This semester I have been assigned a group of interns all at the same company and another all with the Australian Public Service. This provides mutual support for the students, and something which might be formalised, in a similar way to group projects.
Accreditation bodies, such as ACS and Engineers Australia, need to be assured that every student achieves every learning outcome required from WIL. The risk is the university will simply send the student off to work and they will have AI write them a report. The LMS can help with assurance by showing there is a structure to the process. The evidence for each learning outcome can be recorded in the LMS, timestamped. This can be accompanied by a report from the workplace supervisor to say the student was there and performed, to the required standard.
Greetings from the ANU Techlauncher "Sprint 1" assessment review. There are 12 tutors (mostly in person, a couple online) plus two convenors reviewing grades from assessment of the first assessed task for project students. There list a list of teams on the wall, with each tutor going trough their proposed graduate and comments for each team over the last few weeks. Issues with the nature of the project, problems with the client are addressed as we go along. The meeting has been going for two hours. This is a slow, often tedious, occasionally exciting, process as those involved argue over grades and techniques. Students, and the public, may not realize how much effort goes into grading, and how much this is an art, rather than a science. With projects for real clients, which are all different, there is no easy way to do this.
In the late 1980s Education Minister John Dawkins reformed Australian higher education. This "Dawkins Revolution" resulted in degree awarding colleges merging and becoming universities. Having VET sector institutions awarding degrees could be seen as a partial undoing of this revolution, although they will not have the autonomy universities have to define their own degrees.
Australian universities only need a few students undertaking undergraduate training oriented to research in order to provide candidates for advanced research in academia and industry. The majority of undergraduates are undertaking vocational training for a job. If the VET sector can now provide Vocational Degrees for these students, will university education need to be scaled back?
Vocational degrees are being introduced at the same time AI is developing. New degrees could be AI enabled, providing each student with a synthetic personal tutor.
ps: I happened to bump into John Dawkins a few years ago at the ANU campus and was delighted to be able to point out the new buildings to him.
Greetings from "Study or starve? Financial challenges of students studying in Australian and New Zealand Universities" online from the Australian Centre for Student Equity and Success (ACSES). Professor Karen Charlton from the University of Wollongong, discussed a salutogenic approach, looking at what helped students, rather than just what the problems were. Research shows that disabled, international and indigenous students were at higher risk of financial insecuirty, which interfered with their study. This is of interest, as I was one of those students from a low SES background, who struggled at university.
A difficult issue is unpaid placements. Some professions, such as nursing, have a tradition of long placements being required. These placements are typically unpaid. In effect, universities are complicit in forcing students to work for free. Should universities ban free placements, in the expectation that employers would then be forced to pay the students.
I am on the Australian Computer Society board which sets accreditation
requirements for computing degrees. The students can do project work, as
an alternative to placements. This helps with international students in
Canberra, who have difficulty getting a placement, paid or unpaid, due
to security constraints. Perhaps other professions should be doing this.
One option which could help students would be to encourage them to commence their studies at TAFE. They could undertake a short qualification to get an entry level job, before considering university. Also making part time online the default option for university study. Students should not be made to feel bad if it happens they can't get to campus.
Greetings from the ASCILITE MLSIG weekly online meeting, where convenor Thomas Cochrane (University of Melbourne) just reminded us about the "SoTEL 2025—Call for Participation" for 9th of May. This will use the rapid-fire Pecha Kucha presentation technique. Topics are Scholarly Practice, learning innovations, professional development innovations, and outcomes of communities of practice: if it is using a gadget for teaching, it is on topic.
The Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee is holding an inquiry into the "Quality of governance at Australian higher education providers". I made a submission on 3 March. The Committee has not approved the publication of my submission yet, but it was along the following lines:
The Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee is inquiring into the "Quality of governance at Australian higher education providers". However a more important question, I suggest, is the skills which academics need. Rather than worrying how much Vice Chancellors are paid, I suggest more attention and resources be put into ensuring academic staff, at all levels, have the skills needed to work efficiently, in administration, project management, and education. This could be done by offering courses and qualifications which can be undertaken by staff and students. This would also address the demand for quick up-skilling in industry and government. It will reduce costs through more efficient academic work and improve revenue through more course fees.
When I accepted an invitation to join ta university as a Visiting Fellow 25 years ago, I expected to be mostly conducting research, and thinking great thoughts. What I had not realized was the importance of administration, project management and teaching to a university. The Australian Public Service had trained me in administration & project management, however teaching was new to me.
I was reluctantly talked into undertaking the free basic teacher training provided by the university. To my surprise, I found it reduced the stress of teaching and assessment, as well as made the process much more efficient. Also, I discovered that lectures and examinations were not the only way to teach and assess, and were some of the least useful. I went on to further education studies, first at my own university, then at an affiliated one, and then on the other side of the world in North America (Worthington, 2018). This education made teaching easier, particularly when COVID-19 struck, as I had trained for that contingency (Worthington, 2020).
Universities could introduce teaching techniques that provide better, more efficient, and more realistic learning for students. Examples of this are the Australian Crisis Simulation Summit run from ANU by Professor Barrie (ANU, 2025), project work in the ANU Techlauncher program (Awasthyet al., 2017) and internships of the ANU School of Computing (Sweetser, King, & DeWan, 2020). Such intensive programs have typically required large teaching staffs, but with technology, this can be reduced (Birt et al., 2024).
Rather than grade sounding large-scale initiatives, I suggest introducing better administration, project management, research management, and teaching, by teaching these to the students as part of formal assessed courses. Staff can undertake modules from the same courses as offered for students, take the same tests, and be awarded qualifications as a form of "dogfooding" (Worthington, 2018). These modules can also be offered to industry and public service staff.
References
Awasthy, Richa, Shayne Flint, and Ramesh Sankaranarayana. "Lifting the constraints—closing the skills gap with authentic student projects." 2017 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON). IEEE, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1109/EDUCON.2017.7942964
ANU, "Australian Crisis Simulation Summit",2025, https://australiancrisissimulationsummit.com/
Birt, James R., Thomas Cochrane, Elisa Bone, Mehrasa Alizadeh, Paul Goldacre, Vickel Narayan, Todd Stretton, Robert Vanderburg, and Tom Worthington. "(Re) defining Mobile Learning in the Post COVID-19 and GenAI Era." In 2024 ASCILITE Conference: Navigating the Terrain: Emerging frontiers in learning spaces, pedagogies, and technologies, pp. 551-555. Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education, 2024. https://doi.org/10.14742/apubs.2024.1336
Sweetser, P., King, A., & DeWan, T. (2020, February). Setting students up to succeed in computing internships. In Proceedings of the Twenty-Second Australasian Computing Education Conference (pp. 114-121). https://doi.org/10.1145/3373165.3373178
T. Worthington, "Blended Learning for the Indo-Pacific," 2018 IEEE International Conference on Teaching, Assessment, and Learning for Engineering (TALE), Wollongong, NSW, Australia, 2018, pp. 861-865, https://doi.org/10.1109/TALE.2018.8615183
T. Worthington, "Being a Mature Age University Student: 2011 to 2017", Higher Education Whisperer (Blog), January 2, 2018 https://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/2018/01/learning-university-teaching-2011-to.html
T. Worthington, "Responding to the Coronavirus Emergency with e-Learning", Athabasca University, April 17, 2020. https://web.archive.org/web/20200811064635/https://news.athabascau.ca/beyond-50/responding-to-the-coronavirus-emergency-with-e-learning
The Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee is holding an inquiry into the "Quality of governance at Australian higher education providers". Submissions are invited by 3 March 2025, with a report due 4 April 2025.
Some of the start-ups displayed seem readymade for the market. Examples are ways to repair old solar panels and an app which identifies where community batteries are needed. Others are a little more futuristic, such as a hydrogen powered speedboat (which looks like a USV from the Black Sea).
PS: * The technology does have defence application. At present there is concern over Australia's ability to patrol it's shores. One way is with small autonomous vessels. But these need more power than a battery can provide. This could be from hydrogen made on board, allowing the vessel to patrol for months.
The Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee is holding an inquiry into the "Quality of governance at Australian higher education providers". Submissions are invited by 3 March 2025, with a report due 4 April 2025.
The terms of reference of the inquiry are:
"The adequacy of the powers available to the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency to perform its role in identifying and addressing corporate governance issues at Australian higher education providers, with particular reference to:
a. The composition of providers' governing bodies and the transparency, accountability and effectiveness of their functions and processes, including in relation to expenditure, risk management and conflicts of interest;
b. The standard and accuracy of providers' financial reporting, and the effectiveness of financial safeguards and controls;
c. Providers' compliance with legislative requirements, including compliance with workplace laws and regulations;
d. The impact of providers' employment practices, executive remuneration, and the use of external consultants, on staff, students and the quality of higher education offered; and
e. Any related matters."
1 | Dr Fiona Martin (PDF 60 KB) | |
2 | Mr Ian Gray (PDF 1310 KB) | |
3 | Mr Robert Heron (PDF 56 KB) | |
4 | Dr Raffaele Ciriello (PDF 93 KB) | |
5 | Emeritus Professor William Maley (PDF 328 KB) |
Dr Martin expressed concern about universities being more about business than education and research and high Vice Chancellor salaries. Mr Gray is concerned about TEQSA's powers to do their job, lower entry and pass standards at universities & a lack of reporting & auditing of research grants. Mr Heron proposes public reporting on accredited courses & is concerned about conflicts of interest where academics require students to purchase the books they wrote. Dr Ciriello is concerned by "a managerial elite that prioritises profits over academic integrity". and proposes adopting the European model, where university executive are elected by faculty. Dr Maley expresses concern about the decay of ‘faculty governance’, with decision making concentrated in Deputy and Pro-Vice-Chancellors, and Chief Officers.
This all distracted me from the public servants presenting on the Apartment Complex Electrification project. Some time ago I was on a working group advising the Chief Minister how to reduce energy use in the ACT. We focused on apartments as there were already programs for houses. But it turns out this is difficult for technical, legal and social reasons, thus the pilot program.
After a few minutes it was explained the chef is demonstrating cooking on a low energy induction cooktop. The food was excellent.
The call for applications from apartment buildings to participate in the pilot will be released Monday.
Greetings from the IEEE AgeTech Aging and Longevity Webinar. This is early in the morning for me in Australia, so I was reluctant to attend. But being an IEEE Life Member I am in the age bracket for the topic. I am of an age where I have to deal with an increasing number of health, financial, and other issues, so Interest in how tech can help me. In recent weeks I have been to clinics, hospitals, transported by ambulance, scanned by CT & MRI devices, hooked to computer monitors, struggled to use health apps.
The webinar has good speakers, but is a little frustrating by being very US-centric & also having limited feedback. One speaker described the coming presenters as "pinch hitters", which I assume is a baseball term, so lost on Australian participants brought up on cricket. ;-) In the Q&A I asked about this, but did not get a reply. The chat forum is turned off, which limits the ability of participants to have a discussion.
Speakers have covered some of the issues to do with the need for agetech to address the interfaces needed for people aging, the potential for technology in the home to provide more independence (and lower costs).
I suggest we also should look at the positives. Smart phone offer the opportunity for better interfaces for those with a disability. These applications also help others, via the "Curb-Cut Effect": an accessibility feature introduced for one group can help other people.
From purely self interest, AgeTech also has a group of increasinly wealthy & powerful customers. Older users represent a group whom many have disposable income & will vote for government funding to be spent on services for.
One problem with this webinar is that it is taking a long time (44 minutes so far) to get to the call to action. So far none of the speakers has said what I can do, as a technologist, educator & IEEE member. Eventually I found a form to express interest for IEEE SA Industry Connection: IC24-010: Technology Standards for Aging (Age Tech).
An Australian Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, modeled on the US DoD's DARPA, has been proposed in a paper published by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI). I support the proposal, and not just because I suggested it myself in 1999. My proposal got some positive press at the time. I also had the honor of being pilloried in a public statement from DSTO, now Defence Science and Technology Group (DSTG). ;-)
Robert Clark and Peter Jennings propose a partnership between the Defence Department, industry and universities for research & development. This would be extended internationally to instutions in Australia's closet allies (the so called "Five-Eyes").
Jack Dalton's comments on ASPI's proposal are curious in that he expresses a grudging admiration for the Chinese political system. He notes the benefits of a centralized one party state in terms of economic development. However, I suggest centralized five-year plans are not necessarily a good way to become a world leader in a technical field. Japan tried this approach with the Fifth Generation Computer Systems project and found that throwing money at something does't necessarily work. Australia needs something more decentralized, fluid and flexible. Even in the case of China, their central plans are not as centralized as they appear.
In its latest social media promotion Torrens University has boasted "Think this ad was written by an AI expert? You'd be right. Apply now to graduate with a Graduate Certificate of Software Engineering". It is a bold move, but a little confusing as there is a lot more to software engineering than AI. Also a graduate certificate is only six months full time study. That would make a good start, but a lot more training & study is needed to be a software engineer.
At this time of year universities promote alternate forms of education and entry, for those students unable to enter via high school results. UNSW is promoting their diploma entry: "Missed the ATAR for your dream UNSW degree? Don’t let that stand in your way. A UNSW College Diploma is your seamless pathway to your preferred degree – without losing time".