Papers


Abstracts for each presentation are below. There is a link to each speaker's paper, blog or wiki. Some presentations will be added after the conference. If you would like a hard copy of any paper please print it out. In the interests of the trees we do not print papers for the conference.


Streams of Speaker presentations can be found here here.


Student Panel

We are now teaching a generation of students who have not known a world without the Internet. How does this shape their learning patterns and the way in which they form their own communities? Do they use technology in the way we think they do? Do we even know how they use some of these technologies? In this session we'll have an overview of the evolution of learning technologies in the past 10 years and we'll hear from students from different age groups and from different parts of the world how they use technology. Of course they'll come to you via the technologies they use everyday. The session will be moderated by Laurence Zwimpfer.



Keynote



Featured



Case Studies





Keynote Studies


Next Dimension Education - Connected Learning Initiatives and the Role of Telepresence

Scott Norrish: Telstra


In this session we will examine how the emergence and innovation of telepresence and similarly aligned visual communication technologies can provide a positive impact on teaching and learning into the 21st century.

It is important that with all collaborative learning technologies and initiatives in development by education institutions that careful consideration is given to the capability of all students, teachers and invested members of the community to access and participate equally in learning sessions - independent of location, device or access methodology.

During this session we will review the concept of agnostic collaborative working environments for education, the role of telepresence in these environments and the shared learning spaces that support excellence in education.



The What, Why, When and Where of Telepresence

Dr. Michelle Selinger: Cisco


This session will set the scene for the conference by answering some of these questions: Is telepresence the next best thing to human contact? How can it be used effectively? How can it make the difference in education and training? Where and how is it being used, and by whom? What tools can we use it in conjunction with?



Connecting Students Around the World

Christopher Plutte: Global Nomads Group


Founded in 1998, the Global Nomads Group (GNG) is a non-profit organization dedicated to heightening children's understanding and appreciation for the world and its people.

Using interactive technologies such as videoconferencing, GNG brings young people together face-to-face to meet across cultural and national boundaries to discuss their differences & similarities, and the world issues that affect them.

Global Nomads Group programs aim to:

  • Increase young people's knowledge of the world and its people
  • Increase collaboration and dialogue between students of different cultures and nationalities
  • Highlight critical world issues ranging from HIV/AIDS to global warming, to war
  • Provide an educational framework in which students can become active leaders in their own educationp


Featured Studies


When Where doesn't matter anymore: Learning communities and the digital native deconstructed

Stephen Atherton: Apple Australia


"When Where doesn't matter anymore: Learning communities and the digital native deconstructed" is a talk examining both staff and student skills required for a "distant" presence. The concept of the digital native will be questioned and a look at the technologies that are encompassed in their proposed digital world will be touched upon. Apple technologies for podcasting, videoconferencing and collaborating will be discussed and demonstrated.



Gen Y: The changing face of the adult learner

Anne Bartlett-Bragg: A2B and University of Technology


Probably one of the most discussed generations of our times - meet the Gen Ys!

Reports are focusing on their consumer behaviour, their social networking behaviour, and their workplace preferences, but what are they like as learners?

There are assumptions espoused about their digital literacy - as digital natives - but are we prepared for them as adult learners? Are our traditional pedagogies engaging them and more importantly meeting their learning needs?

What will your learning environments look like in the future?



Future Opportunities

Leura Cathcart: E-learning Capability Unit Download the paper


The Australian Flexible Learning Framework (Framework) provides the vocational education and training (VET) system with e-learning skills, professional development opportunities, products, resources and support networks to meet today's increasingly technology-driven learning environment.

Since 2000, the Framework has been funded $15m annually with the backing of the Australian Government and all states and territories.

From 2008-2011, three priorities have been identified for a new proposed Framework Strategy, these include:

  • build on national investment into essential e-learning infrastructure standards and repositories
  • invest strategically in businessprovider partnerships between public and private training providers and business
  • invest in empowering the learner.

Leura Cathcart will discuss past Framework successes along a natural progression from capability building (2004-2004) and client engagement (2005-2007). She will also outline how the Framework plans to take a more strategic approach in relation to the way technology is integrated into the VET sector.



TAFE Open Learning

Greg Harper: Brisbane North Institute of TAFE, Download the presentation


This session will provide an overview of the new TAFE Opening Learning (TOL) service model involving five TAFE Queensland institutes. TOL is a brand for open learning, not an RTO, marketing programs for the five institutes and providing them with high quality open learning support services.


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Virtual Worlds & 3D

Jo Kay: Freelancer Link to Paper


Second Life is an online 3D virtual world developed by San Francisco-based Linden Lab. It provides an immersive environment where users are able to create a digital character or 'avatar' and interact with people from around the world. Second Life also provides a platform for interactions and experiences which allow business, public, education and not-for-profit organisations to connect with their clients and communties in exciting new ways.

Jo Kay aka jokay Wollongong, one of Australia's well-known virtual residents of Second Life, will lead us on a live tour - giving participants a glimpse into this highly creative and immersive online space. During the session we'll visit a number of educational projects and people currently working in Second Life



Telepresence to Omnipresence

Greg O'Grady: Education Queensland Download the paper


The Learning Place is one of Education Queensland's most influential tools in developing and evolving on-line learning practices across the State. Not only does it provide opportunities for students to work both synchronously and asynchronously with students and teachers anywhere in the State, it provides that ease of access from any of the thousands of computers connected to the network. What was once an attempt to create a sense of telepresence is now becoming an omnipresence. What will be the long term impact of this ability to engage at anytime, from anywhere at whatever level of engagement the learner chooses. This session will explore both the intended and unintended outcomes of this phenomena as well as the implications for theories of learning, notions of intellectual property and the changing social and moral dimensions impacting on students and the teaching process.



From telepresence to tangible participation, process and products: Some considerations

Dr. Alan Roberts: QUT Link to Paper


Seemingly, we can identify telepresence when we see it and perhaps know it, when experienced. There are, however, a number of pedagogical design considerations if telepresence is to enable a desired sense of community and real learning. Learning approaches mediated through technology arguably seek to address many of the imperatives to equip individuals for emergent knowledge-age work practice.

While community and team based learning approaches have perceived advantages they do also inexplicably fail, despite the apparent quality of the individual participants. If learning is to be optimised in such contexts there is a need to quickly move beyond notions of mere experiential participation and what might be termed, shallow forms of constructivism. This session seeks to provide a range of research based considerations for making telepresence a worthwhile reality.



Serious games for engaging online learners

Naomi Waldron: Workstar Download the paper


Serious games are best defined as the use of games for non-entertainment purposes. They have wide application, from teaching innovation to school children, to teaching drug users about safe needle use to corporate viral marketing.

Naomi will present case studies from recent projects, explaining how theories about engagement and game playing can be applied to a range of teaching and learning situations.

This is sure to be a fun session!



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Case Studies


Gaming as a Telepresence Technology: ECON 201, an Online Course-as-Game

Dr. Robert Brown & Dr. Scott Brewster: University of North Carolina Download the paper


One of the emerging technologies enabling telepresence and new learning communities is "gaming" - a teaching technique that allows us to create new virtual worlds, immerse students in new roles and enable them to interact with each other across time and space. This case study is of how gaming is enabling telepresence is found in ECON 201, a course launched last fall by the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) in the United States. ECON 201 is designed as a videogame, teaching students economic concepts as they play the role of an alien species learning to survive after crash-landing on a futuristic, post-apocalyptic earth. Students make decisions, experience immediate consequences in a virtual world, and react accordingly.



The VeM Voyage: Journey to a Statewide Learning Community

Mark Jones: BNIT & Simon Brown: Skillstech Download the paper


The Vocational eMentoring network is a thriving learning community made up of teachers, product developers, library staff and instructional designers across TAFE Queensland. Its main objective is to develop skills to provide staff with experienced mentor support to assist them to incorporate effective blended learning strategies into delivery. We'll discuss the technologies we've used to enable and support our Learning Community, some of the things that have made the Learning Community so successful and recommendations developing a distributed Learning Community.



Are all Learning Communities Dependent on Telepresence Technologies?

Jay Mair: The Bremer Institute of TAFE Link to Paper


What if your learning community is not from the remote corners of the globe? What if they live 2 streets away from your college but don't attend. Can an asynchronous group of individuals be a learning community? Jay will discuss the successes and failures of two learning communities and discuss some tips to form and manage a distributed Learning Community.



RIDBC Teleschool: Creating a National Model of Remote Service Delivery

Melissa McCarthy: RIDBC Teleschool Download the paper


RIDBC Teleschool provides high quality educational services to families living in rural and regional areas of Australia who have a child diagnosed with hearing and/or vision impairment. The RIDBC Teleschool Learning Community includes children from 0-18 who have a hearing and/or vision impairment, their families and appropriate local service providers.

The aim of the program is to provide families living in rural and regional areas of Australia with the same level and quality of service they would receive if they lived in the Sydney metropolitan area. Videconferencing is the primary technology used to enable and support our Learning Community. Internet based technology such as email, listserves and web conferencing (Skype, MSN Messenger) are also used to support our program. Forming and managing a Learning Community presents new challenges and RIDBC Teleschool has generated some possible solutions for these challenges. The most obvious challenge is the necessary shift in pedagogy from a professional centred philosophy to a much more family centred approach.



The Competitive Edge; Small - Medium Business fundamentals

Michael Norton: Brisbane North Institute of TAFE Download the paper


Coming Soon



Video Conferenced Class between Georgetown Main and Georgetown Qatar

Hillary Spragg: Georgetown University Link to Paper


Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service in Qatar held a joint undergraduate class via video conferencing between its Main Campus (Washington D.C., USA) and Qatar Campus during the spring of 2007. The class was Government 121 (Comparative Political Systems) taught by Dr. Charles King from Main Campus with six students from the U.S. in his local class', and 25 students in his video-conferenced Qatar class' students from 14 different countries, including Qataris. Hillary will discuss the factors that made this project successful.



The e-Learning Community that Isn't

Phil Wheeler: Wide Bay Institute of TAFE


I've sat at conferences where acronyms and jargon have flowed like they're being invented on the spot. I've watched presenters wax lyrically about interactive resources they've built - that actually aren't interactive at all. I've heard too many stories of bad investments in inappropriate technologies. I've seen too many projects that end up being neither sustainable nor transferable. Where are the advocates? Where are the philanthropists? Where are the people and the structures that make a community worth being a part of? Can we 'fix' the structures that we already have? Can we all be better advocates? What can each of us contribute to make a true e-Learning Community? The final irony in all of this for me is that we are a community of teachers and trainers the very people for whom 'inclusivity' is not just a word, but a way of being.



eXtensions

Julie Woodlock: Barrier Reef Institute of TAFE, Susan Pryor: Palm island Link to Paper


eX stands for a past relationship with learning. Tensions are what we make when we stretch something. "e X t e n s I o n s" is our effort at combining both and developing a telepresence on Palm Island, a 15 minute flight direct from Townsville. Students, tutor and teacher are all making the shift from what we knew as a learning environment in the 20th century to the 21st century. But I must warn you it is experimental. In this presentation we will give you a sample of your own TelePresence on Palm.



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