New Student Modalities

David Kellermann from UNSW

Greetings from the last day of EdutTech 2023 in Melbourne. The session is on new modalities, this includes on studios specifically design for online learning. David Kellermann from UNSW is talking on what to do with online students post pandemic. His definition of hybrid has every student online and in the room can communicate with each other. He has had a classroom built for this mode. This was prototyped in a conventional lecture theater. Students can book to attend the face to face class, with a BBQ after as an incentive. This looks to me a good setup for the "sage on the stage", where students are focused on the instructor. A different room design, is needed for workshops with more student teamwork. I am on next on  "Projects & internships for student employability". 

Providing a Quality Online Educational Experience for International Students

Gavin Moodie

Gavin Moodie has compared the attractiveness of Australian, UK, US and Canadian adjustments for international university students due to COVID-19 (The Conversation, 22 July 20202). He suggests the UK job retention scheme and less restrictive travel provides an advantage, whereas the US uncertainty in restrictions makes it less attractive and Canada is not admitting new students from abroad.

However, almost as an afterthought at the end of the article, Moodie comments:

"Few students and their parents are convinced about the value and quality of online education. And they fear much of the benefit of immersion in an English speaking university environment would be lost if spatial distancing required social distancing."  

I suggest both points could be addressed with a campaign to have Australian university academics trained to teach online and to provide students with structured online activities to practice their English and ability to work together.The current competition between Australian, UK, US and Canadian reminds me of completion between countries making poor quality large gas guzzling cars. While they added more features and weight, others developed high quality small efficient cars and took the market away. The same could be done with quality online education.

Correctly Predicted in 2017 Students Online by 2020

At the moment I am talking part in the weekly ASCILITE Mobile Learning SIG (ML-SIG). There was a discussion of predictions as to what will happen with education. This reminded me that in 2017, I predicted "80% of university education to be delivered on-line by 2020". That has happened but not in the planned methodical way I had hoped.

“There is a revolution taking place in the way university students learn and I expect university degrees to be 80 per cent online by the end of the decade. This has spurred my interest in online learning, which can provide a quality education with fewer environmental impacts.”  From People: Tom Worthington, ANU College of Engineering & Computer Science

But my other prediction for 2020: Canberra the world capital, did not happen. ;-)

Digital Learning For Behavioural Change

I was skeptical, and slightly worried, by the title of Haymarket HQ's talk last Friday: "The Future of Digital Learning to Drive Behavioural Change" by So-Young Kang, Founder of Gnowbe. Haymarket HQ is a start-up center in Sydney's Chinatown, specializing in helping Australian businesses expand into China. But the behavioral change So-Young talked about was not some sort of Orwellian brainwashing, but helping people get ready for new jobs.

So-Young emphasized a mobile first approach to online learning, rather than mobile responsive. The latter is for on-line delivery to desktop computers, but uses features in web technology to ensure the display is adjusted if the student has a mobile device. With real mobile-first, the screen display, the content, and the course, is designed with mobile devices in mind. This requires much smaller units of learning.

With my course design I started with desktop orientation, about ten years ago, and started incorporating more mobile features using responsive design over the last five years. I now assume the student will study the material on a mobile device, do the quizzes and forum interaction, but still use a desktop computer for the major written assignments.

So-Young talked of both businesses and universities using Gnowbe products for staff and students. What was most interesting was using this for people skills. Academics and teachers could look at some of these techniques. What is yet to be explored in detail is how this will fit with conventional post-secondary learning. Are VET and university qualifications to be replaced by micro-learning? I suspect not, but it may be supplemented, or supported by this.

My Teaching and Studying at the Uberversity

In "Cost-saving pressures create a place for Uberversity model", Tim Dodd, Higher Education Editor for The Australian, asked us to imagine a university with no campus. I don't have to imagine it, I have been teaching on-line for nine years and spent four years as an online graduate student. Tim suggests it "... smacks of Uber or Airbnb ...", but this educational model predates both startups by several decades. Online education grew out of paper based distance education, which was pioneered in Australia, fifty years ago.

There are a wealth of good ideas to try out with education, but they are not, as Tim suggests, new. Taking an e-learning format developed by distance and open universities and giving it an "Uber-" prefix doesn't make it new.

In 2008 the Australian Computer Society commissioned me to design a graduate level e-learning course for computer professionals. New to this format, I discovered there were well researched and proven techniques for e-learning, along with world leading Australian e-learning software. In 2013 I signed up as a graduate student of education, to further investigate these techniques. Studying on-line (obviously) at institutions 1,000 km and 13,000 km away, I discovered these techniques went back 50 years and Australian educators had made significant contributions to this work. Also I discovered that educational institutions on the other side of the planet used Australian e-learning software.

So before slapping an "Uber-" prefix on and assuming all innovation comes from Silicon Valley, I suggest a quick web search. You might find that innovation come from much closer to home.