Blended Learning for the Indo-Pacific

Greetings from the the IEEE 7th International Conference on Teaching, Assessment, and Learning for Engineering (TALE) in Wollongong where I was speaking on "Blended Learning for the Indo-Pacific". This proposal has been entered in the the Solomon Islands Technology for Development Challenge to provide Micro-credentials by Mobile Phone for the Solomon Islands.

"Information technology disciplines make up a significant proportion of the degrees taken by international students at Australian universities. These programs are primarily delivered on-campus, but are increasingly using e-learning techniques and becoming, in effect, blended. This provides the opportunity to offer international students part of their program by distance education before, or instead of, traveling to Australia. This could complement the campus-based education provided and complement initiatives by China, Australia, Japan and the United States for regional development. However, Australian university academics have little background or training in e-learning and program designs have not made use of the flexibility this provides. In this paper, we discuss how computer professionals can be trained online to deliver online training to students of the Indo-Pacific. The application of learning theory to support distance learners is also discussed in this paper."

This followed papers from others at the conference on the globalization of Chinese education, Smart Learning at the University of the South Pacific and 21st Century Skills.

ps: TALE 2019 will be December 3-6,  in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. And, just announced, TALE 2020 will be in Takamatsu, Japan. 

Arjun Singh on Gradescope

Greetings from the the IEEE 7th International Conference on Teaching, Assessment, and Learning for Engineering (TALE) in Wollongong where Arjun Singh, Co-Founder & CEO of Gradescope is talking on grading of large numbers of STEM exam papers. This product, recently acquired by TurnItIn, allows student exam papers to be scanned in, and then marked online by an examiner, using a rubric. 

One claim for the product is that the rubric can be customized by the examiner, as they do the marking. The product was demonstrated for engineering and computer science examinations, including for computer code. 

There appear to be two distinct uses for the product: one is for marking traditional paper based examinations. The other is for digitally input long-form input, such as computer code.

This product is new to Turnitin, and integration with their copy detection function is to be added in early 2019. However, even in its current form the interface looks similar to Turnitin's GradeMark.

Globalization of Chinese Education

Greetings from the the IEEE 7th International Conference on Teaching, Assessment, and Learning for Engineering (TALE) in Wollongong where Liang Zhao from Shenyang Aerospace University was speaking on "How We Face Globalization of Chinese Education" (Zhao, Dong, Li, Lin & Li, 2018,). This, I suggest, is also a question for Australian universities in the next few years.

Just as China has been increasingly producing quality goods at a competitive price, it now aiming to export education services. One interesting point in the paper is that international students in China are instructed in English (although this is not the first language of the staff or students). Australian educational institutions, and companies, may be able to provide specialist services to their Chinese counterparts.

"In the next decade, China is expectedly becoming
the most significant education destination for foreigners. Since information technology is a leading industry in China, its related major computer science would surely attract a considerable number of international students. Therefore, our university and teaching group are going to face this big challenge. Due to the scarcity of teaching resources in ordinary Chinese universities, we have to seek a way to fulfil the vast demand of educating these international students while especially most of them require lecturers provide courses in English. In this paper, we discuss the current problems of international education in China and whether the mixed English teaching can be one possible solution or not. Then we present our teaching reform strategies by showing an example of a module called Mobile Programming with Android. Through applying these strategies, we also list the numerical improvements of students results and skills."

Australian universities need to consider how they will respond to expanded Chinese offerings. As with consumer goods, they might try to compete on price, quality, or convenience. I will be speaking on alternative delivery methods for education in "Blended Learning for the Indo-Pacific" later in the conference. In this I suggest, rather than trying to directly compete, a more flexible form of education could be offered.

Reference

Zhao, L., Dong, Y., Li, Z., Lin, N., & Li, J. (2018, December). How We Face Globalization of Chinese Education. In 2018 IEEE International Conference on Teaching, Assessment, and Learning for Engineering (TALE) (pp. 635-640). IEEE. URL https://doi.org/10.1109/TALE.2018.8615155 (or request preprint)

Smart Learning at the University of the South Pacific

Greetings from the the IEEE 7th International Conference on Teaching, Assessment, and Learning for Engineering (TALE) in Wollongong where staff of the University of the South Pacific (UPS) are discussing "Smart Learning in the Pacific: Design of New
Pedagogical Tools". USP is multi-nationals with students who have studied under different school systems. They have ab "early warning system" which extracts data from their Moodle Learning Management System to indicate which students are struggling. They also use Big Blue Button (BBB), for synchronous webinars. Students are tested online for English skills and those who don't score well are automatically signed up of a support course.

Challenges at USP include limited bandwidth to some Pacific countries (something being addressed by the Australian Government funded fibre optic cable to the Solomon Islands). A major focus of USP is teacher training. I will be speaking on "Blended Learning for the Indo-Pacific" later in the conference.

"Smart learning ecosystems leverage on state-of-the-art tools and technologies to help students learn better with Information Communication Technologies (ICT). The ubiquity, innovations and advancements of ICT have transformed pedagogies and approaches to content facilitation and delivery in higher education worldwide, the Pacific region being no exception. The paper essays a number of learning and support tools designed in-house or adopted (or outsourced) recently by a higher education institution in the Pacific contributing to the smart learning ecosystem. The institution has integrated these ICT driven tools to its academic and support programmes, and more recently the in-country science programmes introduced in its member countries. The strengths and challenges from the implementation of these new adaptive tools are highlighted with recommendations to the wider academic populace."