K-10 Digital Technologies Curriculum Impact on Higher Education

Greetings from EdTechPosium at the Australian Catholic University's new teaching building in Canberra. Michael de Raadt and Russell Waldron are discussing "Australian Curriculum for Digital Technologies, NAPLAN and the impact on higher education in future years". One point Michael de Raadt made that this is not just about teaching computer programming and there are physical tasks used, especially for younger children. As an example, some of the audience took part in a bubble sort: exchanging places until they were sorted by name.
Russell Waldron pointed out that students have been through the Digital Technologies Curriculum from K-10 will already have some of the university graduate attributes before they start. However, students from other education systems may not.

Russell Waldron  also pointed out the Digital Technologies Curriculum students will have a different approach to assignments, including group work. These students will be familiar with using online document creation tools, including assigning attribution for group work. The students skills for working this way will likely exceed that of their university teachers.

Michael de Raadt discussed problems and benefits with Online NAPLAN. This requires less manual handling of forms, but more dependence on IT staff, with the potential for technical failures. One benefit is that the feedback happens faster. Russell Waldron pointed out that the online tests require keyboard skills and are adaptive. These students will expect the same at university. A subtle aspect of this is that the assessment changes from how the student did on a standard test, to how the student has progressed.

Evolving Online Graduate Education: From Synchronous to Asynchronous

Greetings from EdTechPosium at the Australian Catholic University's new teaching building in Canberra. The keynote speaker is Julian Cox, Associate Professor, Food Microbiology, University of New South Wales on  "Pedagogy, Peers, Professionalism, Platforms and Practice… and the Workshop Activity". He is describing evolving from online learning as an analogue of face to face lectures, with synchronous sessions, to something students can do in their own time (asynchronous).

I agree with most of what Professor Cox was saying, but suggest online students need some synchronization, just not in the form EdTech people normally think of it. Ideally a self disciplined students can be left to complete tasks, including assessment tasks, to when it suits them. However, as a student myself, I found that if there was no deadline, and no marks, I would put off a task forever.

One of my students has been working on a tool to break down the Synchronous/Asynchronous dichotomy. and hope to demonstrate this today at the conference.

Professor Cox  went on to detail the use of the Moodle Workshop Module to have students peer assess. This module is unused, perhaps because the name makes it sounds like something you would only use for a live face-to-face activities.

Professor Cox  then discussed how to guide students through preparing an e-portfolio (with Mahara). I fond it frustrating when I was told to "reflect" in an e-portfolio, as if this was an inherent skill. After six months hard work and guidance, I had a reasonable idea of what it was about. Then I had to tutor students who had been told to do this with no scaffolding.