Developing my Philosophy of Teaching Statement

Greetings from the Charles Sturt University Canberra Campus, where Pam Roberts from CSU and Karin Oerlemans from Kairos are running a HERDSA workshop on "Developing your Philosophy of Teaching Statement"

This is no powerpoint click and flick exercise. We started at 4:30pm and are going through until 7pm, undertaking a series of short group and individual exercises exploring how we see teaching and our role in in. The workshop is aimed at helping those applying under the HERDSA Fellowship Scheme, but is also applicable to other educational fellowships, particularly the Higher Education Academy (HEA).

One exercise was the Curriculum Ideologies Inventory from "Curriculum Theory: Conflicting Visions and Enduring Concerns" by Michael Stephen Schiro (2012).

Also I have been attending "Talk about Teaching and Learning" (TATAL) sessions at the Australian National University. These sessions take the educator through a series of exercises over several weeks to get them to think about their teaching practices (McCormack, & Kennelly, p. 8, 2009).

The reflective writing process is one now familiar to me having been through the process to be a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (UK) and before that in a  capstone for Athabasca University's MEd. However, this is something which still does not come naturally. Having do it several times I am tempted to use shorthand:

Tom Worthington's Philosophy of Teaching Statement

A social constructionist undertaking mentored, collaborative online learning  (Lindley, 2007) for scaffolded vocational professional education. For details, see my book "Digital Teaching In Higher Education".

Reference

Lindley, D. (2007, November). Computer professional education using mentored and collaborative online learning. In SEARCC 2007, Proceedings of the South East Asia Regional Computer Conference (pp. 18-19). URL http://ijcim.th.org/SpecialEditions/v15nSP4/P09SEARCC_ComputerProfessionalEducation.pdf

McCormack, C., & Kennelly, R. (2009, February). Talking about Teaching and Learning (TATAL). In A Transition Pedagogy: The First Year Experience Curriculum Design Symposium 2009 (p. 8). URL https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sally_Kift/publication/266461923_A_Transition_Pedagogy_The_First_Year_Experience_Curriculum_Design_Symposium_2009_Introduction_-_The_Contemporary_First_Year_Experience/links/54b5e1480cf26833efd3455e/A-Transition-Pedagogy-The-First-Year-Experience-Curriculum-Design-Symposium-2009-Introduction-The-Contemporary-First-Year-Experience.pdf#page=8

Promote Professionalism with Free Online Ethics Course

Straight after the ACS Canberra Conference, I attended a focus group run by Oliver Burmeister from Charles Sturt University, on promoting professionalism in ICT. This is part of a two year study funded by the Australian Computer Society (ACS) and the Australian Research Council (ARC) on "Investigating which strategies are most effective in overcoming ethical problems facing information and communications technology professionals". My suggestion was to provide free open access educational materials online which meet the requirements for ACS accredited education programs.

ACS could assemble material into the form of free online self paced courses. Thse could be used by anyone wanting to improve their understanding of professional ethics, used by ACS in its own educational programs, by an educational institutions in their programs and as an example of the minimum standard ACS requires for all accredited programs. For the last ten years I have been teaching ICT Ethics using materials from ACS to students at the  Australian National University:  "Professional Ethics and Social Issues in Networked Information Systems".

Previous published work by Oliver on ICT ethics includes:"Ethics of Computing Committees: Suggestions for Functions, Form, and Structure (2008).

Canberra Innovation Competition

The 2013 "Innovation ACT" completion is being launched 6pm, 28 August, at the Australian National University in Canberra. 
Over nine weeks, teams of higher education students and staff from the Canberra region compete for $55,000 in prizes, for the best new business ideas.

The teams are given help with preparation of business plans and to prepare a pitch to investors. Institutions include the Australian National University (ANU), University of Canberra (UC), Canberra Institute of Technology (CIT), Australian Defence Force Academy (UNSW ADFA), Australian Catholic University (ACU) and Charles Sturt University (CSU).

In past years I have helped with presenting to the teams on sustainability for business ideas and as a team member. The competition is challenging but fun. Some student take part in the competition as part of their formal studies in business and innovation disciplines, but this is not required.

Master of Education in Knowledge Networks and Digital Innovation

Having completed the Australian National University (ANU) Certificate in Higher Education, my intimidate task is to apply what I have learned to help individual academics and universities with e-learning. This new blog, Higher Education Whisperer, is part of that.

Also I am looking for a Masters in Education to undertake. Unfortunately ANU discontinued theirs before I could enroll. But Charles Sturt University (CSU) have a new one which looks interesting, in "Master of Education (Knowledge Networks and Digital Innovation)". Courses include:

1. INF532 Knowledge Networking for Educators
2. INF533 Literature in Digital Environments
3. INF535 Information Flow and Advanced Search
4. INF536 Designing Spaces for Learning
5. INF541 Game Based Learning
6. ETL411 ICT for Innovative Practice
7. ETL402 Literature in Education
8. ETL523 Digital Citizenship in Schools
9. INF506 Social Networking for Information Professionals
10. INF443 Digital Preservation
11. EER500 Introduction to Educational Research
12. ESC515 Classroom Technologies