In early 2008 Pep Serow received a UNE e-fellowship to undertake revision of the School of Education’s secondary mathematics education curriculum units. This involved maths education units at junior and senior secondary levels. These remained essentially in the same format as when they were paper based, online and CD delivery simply provided the paper materials in pdf form. It was time for a major overhaul.

“Revising Mathematics Education”
- an interview with
Pep Serrow
\”Revising Mathematics Education\” – an interview with Pep Serrow

As an educator of future teachers, Pep believes it is important for the unit delivery to model how students should themselves be teaching. In line with this philosophy, Pep changed the existing practice of using ICT (Information Communication Technology) as a tool to display pdf files into the practice of using ICT as a tool for active teaching and learning.

Pep started by organizing the unit content into modules – each with their own learning outcomes, learning activities and assessment task. The assessment tasks were integrated into the teaching/learning sequence with more complex assessment tasks required mid-semester and at the end of semester. Comprehensive criterion based marking rubrics were developed for each of the major assessment tasks. The final rubric grid listed task components down the side, grade across the top, and within each cell a comprehensive description of the performance required for the task component to achieve at the nominated grade.

Moving materials from pdf format onto a webpage allowed Pep to easily hyperlink to any web address from within the learning materials. This allowed her to link to any material that would aid her students such as mathematics pages from the NSW Board of Studies, mathematics educational tutorials developed outside of UNE, or ASO fact sheets or web pages. Suddenly students were able to access a vast array of support materials at the click of a mouse.

In mathematics there are a range of software tools that teachers can use to help their students understand mathematical concepts. Knowing that learning to use a tool can distract from learning what you want to achieve in using it, Pep made a series of videos at her desktop that illustrate both the technical aspects of using the software tool and how it can be used in mathematics teaching. She found this was simple to do using Camtasia, a product that records keystrokes in conjunction with an audio commentary. Pep said “All I had to do was press ‘record’ then run through an exercise as if I was showing it to a student in my office. Then it was ‘stop’, ‘save’ and upload to the online unit.”

The other tool Pep tool advantage of in the online environment was Google Docs. For those unfamiliar with Google Docs, this is a feature of Google that allows shared editing of a document. In the maths education units, small groups of students used Google Docs to prepare a shared written task. While she could have used the wiki in Sakai, Pep’s experience has shown that schools often use Google Docs so she wanted students to become familiar with it.

The changes have only been in place a short time, but Pep is already collecting evidence about their impact. For starters student feedback has improved significantly, with average ratings increasing noticeably, accompanied by many positive comments. Finally, Pep has noticed an improvement in the quality of student work from previous semesters, in particular their group work. She is extremely pleased to see from this strong evidence that her work is appreciated by students and that it helps them learn effectively.

Pep will be presenting on her work at the Teaching and Learning Showcase Week August 12-18 as part of the “Improving Outcomes” session, 1-2:30pm Thursday 13 August. Visit www.une.edu.au/altc/showcase for more details.

Creating the learning design for a first year, compulsory unit can be a challenge, particularly when the subject matter is difficult. In 2008 Jackie Reid received academic renewal funding to take on such a challenge for STAT100, a unit she had actually created herself almost 10 years prior. Although she had taught the unit for many years, Jackie took a break between 2003 and 2007, and found this allowed her to look at the unit with fresh eyes in the review process.

“Redeveloping STAT100″
- an interview with
Jackie Reid
\”Redeveloping STAT100\” – an interview with Jackie Reid

The Challenges for STAT100

A major challenge when teaching STAT100 is motivation – students don’t understand why they have to do it. Most have very little exposure to statistics in high school, so when they come into university they think “I want to be a zoologist or an environmentalist or whatever, so why do I have to do statistics?” This is likely to apply to every new group of enrolling students, so addressing motivational issues needs to be built into the unit.

The second challenge is that fundamental concepts in statistics are challenging for students. There is new terminology, and new concepts such as variability, sampling distributions , and inferential statistics. Statistics is about making decisions in the face of uncertainty. When students are used to calculating exact answers in mathematics, the uncertainty of a probability can be hard to understand. Not only do students need to understand it themselves, but they need to be able to communicate their understanding to others.

Finally there is the challenge of learning to use specialist statistical software. The software used most recently was powerful and freely available on the web, but proved challenging for students to learn. This meant students often focused on the process of trying to analyse the data, rather than the meaning behind the problem and the interpretation of the results.

Building the New Learning Design

The unit redesign was guided by a working group consisting of people from the various disciplines that had STAT100 as a core unit, a TLC representative, and, of course, Jackie herself. Student input came from student ratings and comments from end of semester surveys over several years.

STAT100 was thoroughly revised, with improved and increased learning resources, and learning activities that scaffolded student learning more effectively. Improvements to the learning resources included: addition of a new textbook, a revised study guide that complemented the textbook, a greater range of practical examples, demo videos for the software, and student workbooks for the practical sessions. Improvements to the learning activities included: online quizzes to reinforce the fundamentals of terminology and notation, restructuring of practical exercises to ensure basic skills were developed before progressing to more complex skills, and use of the workbooks to help build skills in interpreting results. To help provide off campus students with the on campus equivalent of a tutor led practical session, an online workbook was developed, which at the end of each section, would display model answers, thereby providing instantaneous feedback.

Is it Working?

The changes have been introduced gradually into the unit – last year saw the introduction of the new textbook, study guide and online quizzes, with the online practicals and software demo videos introduced only this semester. However with the basics in place last year, three of the four cohorts showed improved student feedback ratings, and attrition both last year and this year have reduced. Jackie expects that with the new resources introduced this year student feedback ratings will improve again.
To get more detailed information, extra questions about the quizzes were added to the unit survey last year . Students were very positive about how these quizzes helped their learning. At the end of 2008, one of the online pracs was trialled on a voluntary basis by a handful of students. Feedback was very positive and so Jackie completed all those required for the first half of this semester. Once again students responded favourably along the lines of “I find they have been a great confidence builder and being able to check answers straight away is excellent. I hope you can do them for the rest of the chapters.” Jackie said “It would have been impossible to do this level of work without the Academic Renewal funding, and it was a huge amount of work over and above what the funding covered. So when a previous student came up to me the other day and said ‘Jackie, I don’t hear negative reports about STAT100 anymore. What’s going on?’ it makes it all feel worthwhile.”

Read on for more about how the learning design was modified to address the three key challenges

Challenge 1: Building Motivation

In the on campus STAT100 class, students are asked in the opening lecture “Why do you think you are doing this unit?” At least 90% say it is because to the unit is compulsory, not because they think stats sounds interesting. This can lead into a discussion about statistics: What is statistics? Why is statistics important? Why do students think they are being made to do it in their Bachelor of Natural Resources, or Rural Science or Science? How are they going to use it? This helps students think right from the start about why they might be doing this subject, rather than just seeing it as a series of hoops to jump through.

Examples are chosen to be relevant to the agricultural scientists and the zoologists and so on, but in the introductory unit the examples are still quite basic. Unfortunately it is not until the students start doing their own research that they really want to know more. Jackie said that’s when the third and fourth years come back to her saying “I wish I’d done more stats”, and these are the same students who, when they were in first year, were saying “Why do we have to do this?”

Challenge 2: Developing Understanding

Students need to develop a good understanding of a number of fundamental statistical concepts. Jackie considers the understanding of variability to be a key difficulty, and therefore focuses her own research in statistics education on this area. She says understanding variability is one of the key struggles students have, “because they come from mathematics with a fairly deterministic viewpoint and to understand that statistics is about probability and variability is a big leap conceptually.” Consider medical diagnostic testing for instance, which most of us assume is 100% accurate. It isn’t. Consider swine flu. The test you take to see if you have swine flu isn’t 100% accurate. You may get a false positive result (i.e., the test result says you have swine flu when, in fact, you don’t), which is not so problematic unless you’re a Rugby League player being asked not to play. More concerning is a false negative result (i.e. the test result indicates that you do not have the flu when, in fact, you do): the person tested could come out of isolation and resume their normal activities, unknowingly infecting others. Tests therefore place higher emphasis on minimizing false negative results over false positive results, but it is important to understand the result is still only a probability.

The learning resources were broadened to include an excellent textbook and practical session workbook. The study guide has a summary for each chapter of the text, which identifies relevant sections in the textbook to read, summarises and reinforces the main concepts, provides examples on using the software to analyse example data sets, and identifies other activities such as practical sessions or online quizzes that need to be completed.

The unit now incorporates five online quizzes designed to help students learn fundamental terminology and notation. In order to maximize learning (advertised to the students as maximizing marks) students have two opportunities to complete each quiz. This allows students to revise weak areas and improve on their second attempt. Students appreciate this opportunity for formative learning. The quizzes were interspersed between practical sessions and assignments so application of concepts was immediate.

Students are provided with a workbook to guide their practical sessions. Previously students would come to the session, work through the task, and write down the results produced by the software, without spending time thinking about what those results implied. This meant the focus was on obtaining the result rather than understanding the problem, the meaning of results, and how best to communicate their findings. The questions in the workbook have been designed to not only help them develop skills in using the software but to encourage them to think about the results all the way through the session. There are questions before they analyse the data to get them to think ahead such as: How would you analyse this? What results or outcome might you expect? Why? They are also asked to compare their predictions with their results and resolve any discrepancies. At the end they are asked to write a meaningful conclusion in the context of the problem. By ensuring the questions are answered in the workbook it means students have a learning resource available when they do the assignments, and in particular they are learning to communicate their understanding of statistical results.

In a real project, the ability to communicate in everyday language that relates back to the context of the problem is vital. The marking of assessment tasks communicates this importance. Marks are not only allocated to the reporting of the results but also to a well-written informative conclusion that does not use statistical jargon. Students can use these skills to report a real project with an executive summary up the front that summarises the implications for this experimental study with the details of the results in the body of the report. The implications might be to invest in a particular variety of wheat, provide more education in a particular area, or market a new drug.

Software

Software has always been an issue. It is an extra financial burden if students have to purchase software as well as a text. In 2003 we started using a software product called R which had excellent functionality and was free. On the downside it had a command line interface (like MS DOS for those of us who remember it) meaning it could take students a long time to learn how to use it. In 2006 a menu driven interface (Rcmdr) became available which alleviated a lot of usability problems, but there’s still some difficulty with installation for off campus students (on campus students can use the computer labs). And for many students, learning to use the software can distract their attention from understanding the question and interpretation of results.

With the unit revision Jackie therefore aimed to make installation and learning to use the software easier, and to encourage students to focus on meaning as they were working through a problem. The installation problem has been solved as a completely automated installation wizard was developed. Results this semester suggest that this innovation has decreased the number of queries from off-campus students at the beginning of the semester. To aid learning, a series of video clips about the software were created – from “How to Open R”, “Introduction to Rmdr”, through to using a range of specific functions. The latter are directly referred to in the practical workbook as required.

The new practical workbook, as well as being available in paper form, was also developed into electronic form. This facilitated embedding of video links, but more importantly facilitated immediate feedback after each practical session – for off campus students it is almost as good as having a tutor available. Question forms include multiple choice, direct number entry, or short text answer responses (once again encouraging written communication). The first two can be marked directly, but as that’s not possible for the short text answers, a button was added that says “show me the answer” whereby a model answer is displayed. This is a vast improvement over the previous practice of posting solutions at the end of the week. One student said “direct feedback straight away is useful because [it] makes you realize your mistake before you remember how to do it wrong..”

Finally, the requirement to submit assignments electronically meant we faced the problem of how students submit equations. It can be done in MS Word but it is not intuitive. So another short video was developed which shows students how to do use Microsoft equation editor.

Jackie will be demonstrating some of these innovations at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Teaching and Learning Showcase onFriday 14 August 2009

Article by Associate Professor Wendy Beck

ALTC Priority Project 2007-2008: Wendy Beck and Catherine Clarke, Team Leaders, with the Australian National Committee for Archaeology Teaching and Learning

Shared understandings of the learning outcomes for university graduates are known as subject ‘benchmarks’. In 2007, when we began our project, none existed for Australian graduates in archaeology. So what should a subject benchmark look like? The Australian benchmark developed for archaeology is similar in structure to those developed elsewhere (especially in the United Kingdom), consisting of three types of learning outcomes: subject knowledge and understanding; archaeology-specific skills, and general skills.

Long-term history underpins all societies and is fundamental to cultural identity and nation-building. Archaeology helps us understand Australia’s unique 50,000 years of human history and contributes to global heritage conservation. Given its importance, it is important to maintain the high standard of specialized university education in archaeology; the reason why a subject benchmark was developed.

“Benchmarking degrees”
- an interview with
Wendy Beck
\”Becnhmarking degrees\” – an interview with Wendy Beck

The benchmark was drafted by a group representing all ten of the university providers of specialized archaeology education in Australia and refined by consultation amongst the broader profession, especially employers and the various professional associations. It focuses on the four-year honours degree in archaeology because this is considered to be the minimum preparation for both professional archaeologists and higher degrees. The benchmark defines the range of knowledge, skills and understandings honours graduates in archaeology can be expected to possess and discusses potential employment areas. The range of skills includes general and generic work skills as well as specifically archaeological ones. The benchmark developed by our team is freely available on the web through the Australian Archaeological Association at: By degrees: Benchmarking archaeology degrees in Australian universities 2007 http://www.australianarchaeologicalassociation.com.au/ANCATL.

The archaeology benchmark forms a nationally-agreed education standard that has been widely and publicly disseminated. As archaeology is a discipline that crosses the traditional humanities/science divide, it has a greater breadth and diversity than other professional disciplines. It uses a wide range of methods that apply to all people in all regions, from all time periods, and includes historical, maritime and Indigenous subfields. An easily-accessed benchmark results in better informed university archaeology teachers, students, and employers of graduates. We consider that it is an important foundation for building better Archaeology education and research programs in Australia, currently and into the future.

Participants in the benchmarking project reported a range of other useful outcomes. The general opportunity to meet with and discuss teaching and learning issues with colleagues was highly appreciated, and resulted in the initiation of some projects and identification of need in other areas. Work that was initiated were a pilot project for the cross-institutional moderation of Honours degrees and initial work to articulate the benchmarks into teaching at the unit or subject level.

Areas for future attention, discussion and action included:
• Mapping the benchmarks onto subjects and units across degree programs
• Developing teaching and learning resources specifically for the Australian context that will further support both students and teachers in universities. There are already some initial efforts in this regard in preparation.
• Addressing interrelated questions concerning disciplinary diversity; potential collaboration and the distribution of resources in the academy; and professionalisation and formal representation for all archaeologists in Australia.

Further funding to continue the momentum generated by the project into the future has recently been granted to Wendy Beck through the ALTC Fellowship program.

The photograph shows Kim Newman (left) and Associate Professor Wendy Beck. (Photo by David Elkins).

Further Reading:
2008 Beck, W. and Clarke, C. Archaeology Teaching and Learning in Australia 2003-2008
Perspectives from the Academy. Research in Archaeological Education Journal
1(electronic)
http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/hca/archaeology/RAEJournal.

During the April term break UNE was delighted to host Dr Richard Raban, Head, School of Software, UTS. Dr Raban was primarily here to share a software product he and his team developed (funded by an ALTC grant) called TeCTra (Team Contribution Tracking). TeCTra is Dr Raban’s solution to the problem of measuring the contribution of individual students in a group project.

TeCTra allows students to log their own contribution, and rate and provide comments on the contributions of other team members. It is therefore a useful tool to aid in allocating marks for group projects. In the process, it encourages students to reflect on their own and others contributions to a larger project.

Anyone who has tried incorporating a group assessment task in their unit is familiar with the challenges involved in allocating marks fairly. Some students complain that they did most of the work, others that their contribution was more valuable, and almost without fail there’s several claiming that the process of working in groups is too awkward and can they please just do everything individually. We are left to assume that those who benefit from the work of others keep quiet!

Some ways to solve the problem are:
• to have the group do the work together, but ask each student to write and submit their own report
• provide a group mark (same for all students) and an individual mark for a reflective task on the group process
• provide a group mark, same for all students, but with the possibility of a decrease if all other group members identify an individual as a low or non-contributor.

Each of these has limitations, which is why Dr Raban developed TeCTra. Dr Raban uses TeCTra in his capstone software project unit. In this unit, students work in groups of about 10 to produce a major software project. During the semester the groups meet once a week with a tutor where they review the status of the project by demonstrating their contribution, and plan activities for the following week. Prior to each meeting students record their contribution in TeCTra. This involves data entry of the number of hours and description of their work against various categories. For instance, 2 hours of research, 3 hours of planning, 2 hours of writing etc. After the meeting, each student anonymously rates the contribution of others with a comment and numerical rating. The rating can be 0=no contribution, 1=low contribution, 2=expected contribution, 3=greater than expected contribution.

The software project is the single assessment task for the semester, with 50% allocated at the mid-semester review, and the remaining 50% at the end of semester. Staff assessment determines the total project mark, with each student in the group receiving 60% of this mark. The remaining 40% is multiplied by the number of students in the group and given to the group to allocate amongst themselves. Dr Raban told us that pre TeCTra most groups allocated the marks equally amongst members, but with the TeCTra records they now allocate marks somewhat more broadly, even though students are not required to use the TeCTra records in the mark allocation process. The results indicate that just having the information available allows students to justify allocating higher or lower marks for each group member.

Dr Raban went on to say that TeCTra helps with two other problems associated with group work. The first is the exposure of cliques, thereby lessening their power. With contributions examined and rated by everyone, preferential ratings either become lost in the average, or exposed and disregarded. The second is that students who contribute less than others are exposed early in semester. Such a student can then either increase their contribution or continue as a low contributor, knowing they will be penalized in the group marking process.
From a teaching perspective, the ability to work in a team and be able to provide feedback to other team members is a skill we would want all students to learn. TeCTra is an excellent tool in this regard as it helps students reflect on how they and others contribute in achieving the team goals.

Potential users need to be aware of two limitations of TeCTra. Firstly, students are unlikely to use it in the first instance unless compelled to. Secondly, groups need to have six or more members for the full benefits to be realized. Less than six members and anonymity in providing feedback is compromised.

As TeCTra was developed via an ALTC grant it is available for installation at UNE free of charge. Before undertaking this commitment however, Dr Raban has generously offered UNE the opportunity to conduct a few trials on the UTS hosted system.

If you are interested in participating in a trial please contact Cathryn McCormack, Academic Developer (ALTC), Extn 3480 or email cathryn.mccormack@une.edu.au.

For more information please see:

http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/singapore07/procs/raban-poster.pdf

http://www.ascilite.org.au/images/papers/conferences/sydney06/proceeding/pdf_papers/ASCILITE%20____:%20Raban%20and%20Litchfield%20-%20Supporting%20peer%20assessment%20of%20individual%20contributions%20in%20groupwork.pdf

In the 2008 ALTC citation round, the German Team (Professor Kerry Dunne, Dr Linda Hess-Liecht, Dr Julia Petzl-Berney, Jenny Evans, Iain Mackay, Peter Hess, and Dr Beat Lehmann) were recognised for “sustained innovation in using technologies to foster distance education students becoming autonomous language learners”. This article outlines the German Team’s journey: what they’ve achieved and where they’re going. Sadly, Professor Kerry Dunne, who was interviewed by In Focus for this story is going in a different direction – to Wollongong University.

Members of the German team at the 2008 ALTC Awards in Sydney

Our work started in the 1990s, when, knowing how much technology can enhance tertiary language instruction, we began developing computer assisted language learning at UNE. Our goal was to produce a German language course that helped students develop authentic language through exercises distributed on a CD. The language found in a textbook, known as normative language, is restricted in the range of vocabulary and grammar presented. Authentic language is what most language learners aim for, as it means they can communicate effectively with native German speakers. To ensure students gained maximum benefits from the resources, we worked hard to make the exercises interesting and relevant.

“Learning German at UNE via mp3 downloads” – an interview with Professor Kerry Dunne

\”Learning German at UNE with mp3 downloads\” – an interview with Professor Kerry Dunne

The final CD of resources contained a series of instructional sessions, each containing:
• Language comprehension exercises which aimed to bridge the gap between normative language (textbook language) and the much broader area of authentic language.
• Film clips from a German soap opera. This allowed students to observe scenarios from a genre with which they were familiar, thereby providing them with a full range of comprehension cues, far beyond what the spoken language alone can offer.
• A series of learning exercises that could be repeated at will until the student gained mastery of the material.

The combination of both auditory and visual information on the CD was an application of multimodal learning, which provides an optimal learning environment for language students (Jewitt 2006).

This initial work was built upon with an ALTC grant in 2004 which allowed us to assess any differences in the effects of the language course across all students, internal and external, first years through honours students, studying here at UNE or through our collaborators at Newcastle and James Cook universities. What we found was that mature aged (mostly external) students developed greater levels of autonomous learning behaviour and implicit knowledge in comparison to the younger (mostly internal) students. A second ALTC grant then funded the development of resources to increase the engagement of younger students.

The new course consisted of 14 online learning modules following the format of a traditional German language course, i.e. language instruction followed by comprehension exercises. All of these were designed to develop student autonomous learning behavior and increase student implicit knowledge of German. Rather than purchasing new software requiring specialist expertise, we aimed to use available technology more effectively.

Each module used a separate learning approach and included:
• Audiovisual presentation of the content to be learned – PowerPoint slides highlighted particular aspects of grammar and vocabulary, with embedded German audio
• Web-based comprehension games to assess student learning of the material

These allowed students to review the material and practice the exercises until they felt they had attained mastery of the material. As students progressed through the modules, they encountered references to learning strategies in previous modules. This provided a scaffold of learning, thereby encouraging students become more independent and self regulated (Hartman, 2002).

The course was thoroughly evaluated through a series of focus groups across the three campuses. While students were generally very positive about the course, and web page hit counts showed all modules were frequently accessed, the focus groups revealed a misheld assumption. We had assumed that all students were able to easily access the online material through campus computer labs, but this turned out not to be the case for some. We therefore decided to provide the modules in an ITunes subscription version. This format was selected due to the affinity that students have with the operation and use of IPod, IPhone and Blackberry devices. Allowing the option of internet or mobile technology has broadened our delivery of the German course.

The 2008 Horizon Report predicted that mobile technology will become a key method of conveying educational instruction within 3-5 years, a time length that was shortened to 1 year in the 2009 edition. The shortened time frame is due principally to new interfaces and the ability to run third party applications. By offering the German course in this way, a whole new range of access possibilities are presented to students. When presented at a recent conference, the online German program was so well received that other Australian universities and the Open University of the UK wanted to implement the program immediately. The Open University of the UK saw the program as a way for students to maintain their language knowledge during summer or semester breaks, as the old adage “use or lose it” applies particularly strongly to language.

It is exciting to see our online German language course so well received by both students and colleagues for its flexibility, effectiveness in developing autonomous learning behaviours, and increased levels of implicit language knowledge. The model can be expanded immediately to other language courses, but more than that, it offers a prime example of how technology can be used to overcome access barriers to higher education.

References
Hartman, H. (2002). Scaffolding and Cooperative Learning. Human Learning and Instruction (pp. 23-69) New York: City College of City University of New York
Jewitt, C. (2006). Multimodal learning. Technology, literacy, and learning: A multimodal approach (pp. 76 – 107). New York: Routledge.
Johnson, L., Levine, A., & Smith, R. (2009). The 2009 Horizon Report. Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium.

Using Second Life effectively in Education

Jass Easterman (aka Sue Gregory, lecturer in ICT, School of Education) was created 2007 after identifying a need for a presence in Second Life for research and educational purposes. Jass set about learning how to use the environment by attending building and scripting classes and joining as many educational groups as possible.

Sue Gregory talks about
Second Life
\”About Second Life

First semester 2008 was spent creating a meeting place for future students. Education Online Headquarters (HQ) was constructed ready for second semester 2008. In July students from two technology ICT education units were invited to use Second Life as part of their studies. Both units had Second Life (SL) components built into a small section of their assessment tasks. Twelve students took up the offer but due to technological or locational issues, many others who were interested were not able to participate.
It was decided that the learning provided in SL would have to be very broad as the students were studying to be either primary or secondary teachers. The original intention was that the group would meet two or three times in SL with tasks to complete between meetings, however the students enjoyed the “face to face” interaction so much it evolved into weekly lectures from national and international experts in education.

The first meeting in SL was a “get to know you” session, which introduced Education Online HQ (see Image 2). There were general discussions about how to use, and the protocols of using, SL. We finished up with a shopping trip (to free vendors) as students wanted to change looks, clothing, hair and even wings.

Jass Easterman

Each week began with meeting at Education Online HQ where students were given leading statements/questions for discussion. These got so involved that sometimes it was difficult to move on to the next task. However, as much as the students valued the discussions, they also valued finding out what other institutions were doing with SL and how they were educating their students. The guest lecturers taught in a variety of disciplines, including IT, a variety of education areas such as Kindergarten, English, Music, Drama, Art, Science, ICT and also educating school students through Teen Life (an equivalent SL for teenagers).
The UNE students were given the opportunity to attend presentations provided by world experts without leaving their homes. The following weeks took the students to: University of Hamburg, Germany, with Dr Torsten Reinders, St Josephs School (Joeys, Sydney) with Judy O’Connell (Head Librarian),

Education Online HQ

University of Torino, Italy, with Riccardo Pepino and Giacomo Pirelli, Griffith University with Dr Jason Zagami, Sydney University with Dr Angela Thomas and Deakin University with Deakin Fellow Jenny Grenfell (see www.virtualclassrooms.info for images of these sessions).

Student performing

Students were given some basic building instructions to build a stage so they could present how they would use SL in their future teaching. One student who was an opera singer also sang for a very appreciative audience (which included dancing, animations and lighting effects).

All sessions over the semester were so well received that the students turned up each week even though the sessions weren’t assessable or compulsory. Most of the students have indicated that they wish to attend the sessions in 2009 when they are offered again. Some of their comments were:

- I had my first visit to 2nd life on Wed and it was a blast. I can see the students engaged in this environment and developing understanding in life skills and applying these to real life.
- It has been one of the highlights of my entire uni life! (this is my 7th year of uni…. and only performing in operas has been better)
- In a strange way I think exploring a virtual world can actually make that world more real than say looking at pictures, or reading texts or even viewing a video.
- I know I keep saying it, but I am absolutely loving this course. And not just SL: the entire unit is so well presented – for instance, I have heard your voice! It helps avoid the feeling of isolation so many of us externals feel and the way in which the information is delivered makes it so easy to learn. Thanks!
- Well, had another interesting session in second life last night. It all seems to be coming together as our understanding and control increases. Other students have some useful ideas and have been very creative with their outfits and abilities. Well done to all. I think that this tool has great potential for use in schools once it has been developed to cater for the security issues that will arise. At first I did not see the use for English in particular but have since changed my viewpoint and now feel that it would be a great learning tool for students. It has the capacity to be individualised for every class and teacher and therefore will become essential in the future.
- I love these discussions Jass! I am going to miss them.

Publications

Refereed Conference Papers

Gregory S. (2008). Innovative Tutorial Model using Second Life – through weekly tutorials with national and international guests, CreateWorld 2008 Conference Proceedings

Book Chapter (to be published in 2009)

Gregory, S., Reiners, T., Tynan, B., Dreher, H. (2009) Alternative realities; Immersive Learning for and with Students. H Song (Ed), Distance Learning Technology, Current Instruction, and the Future of Education: Texas Southern University, Houston, USA: IGI Global