MIT App Inventor

The App Inventor (AI2) platform (Abeywardena, 2015) looks interesting. This is a similar interface to that used for teaching programming to school children and to undergraduates taking computing as a service course.

Australian company, Grok Learning use such a visual programming language (Blockly) for teaching programing to school kids. The similar "Snap!" programming environment is used for UC Berkeley's "Beauty and Joy of Computing" (Harvey, 2012).

However, I am not sure we should be turning every educator into a computer programmer. I think we need something at a higher level of abstraction, which implements educational constructs, rather than programming ones.

Reference

Abeywardena, I. S. (2015). Educational App Development Toolkit for Teachers and Learners. Retrieved from http://oasis.col.org/bitstream/handle/11599/1729/2015_Abeywardena_Educational_App_Dev.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

 

Harvey, B. (2012). The Beauty and Joy of Computing: Computer Science for Everyone. Proceedings of Constructionism 2012, 33-39. http://ftp.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/BJC.pdf

ANU Needs an Educational Design Manager

The Australian National University in Canberra had advertised for a "Manager, Educational Design".

"ANU Online has an exciting opportunity for an experienced and organised individual to lead a team of education design and technology specialists brought together by the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic) in order to further the University's digital learning strategy.

Reporting to the ANU Online Lead, the Manager, Educational Design plays a critical role in engaging a wide range of stakeholders to transform the University's approach to teaching and learning.

As the successful candidate, you will play a lead role in developing, reviewing, improving and implementing professional development opportunities in pedagogy and educational technology for academic and professional support staff.

Suitable candidates will possess a relevant post graduate qualification, preferably in educational design, education or information communication technologies, with demonstrated skills and experience as an educator including classroom instruction, curriculum design or incorporating educational technologies into teaching and course management."

User Experience Designer Jobs at Universities

The University of Canberra recently had a vacancy for a "Lead User Experience Designer" to produce courses. It would be interesting to see if there are any differences in roles compared to an "Educational Designer", "Course Designer" or "Instructional Designer".

... The Lead User Experience Designer is responsible for the development of new models of teaching and learning with an emphasis on course design and delivery that drives Flexibility, Innovation, Retention and Engagement. ...