Category: #sotel

UniMelb SoTEL Research Network Blog @MelbCSHE

While it’s been a bit quiet here on my personal WordPress Blog lately – I have been busy establishing the University of Melbourne SoTEL Research Network and posting to our Blog space there: https://blogs.unimelb.edu.au/sotel/

Melbourne CSHE Scholarship of Technology Enhanced Learning research network Blog

Check the UniMelb SoTEL research network Blog for lots of updates and links to research!

Exploring #Heutagogy

Building on a conversation during my facilitation of the #EDUC90970 “Facilitating Online Learning” graduate certificate in undergraduate teaching elective, the participants and I collaboratively generated a conversation that began with critiquing the concept of fostering communities of inquiry to a process of double loop learning about heutagogy and its relationship to the principles of early childhood education (e.g. Montessori). This exploration of the concepts of Heutagogy filtered through into the design of participants prototype online courses. While there were some very creative course design proposals developed, the implementation of heutagogical principles for activity and assessment design were mitigated by conceptions of the scale of the shift in thinking for both lecturers and students and institutional support to enable these changes, particularly in large first-year cohorts – although there were some creative course designs at scale. In particular there seemed to be a continued reticence to build learner-generated contexts into the proposed course designs. While most course designs were creative in the design of a move away from high-stake summative exams and large essays as assessment activities towards more timely formative feedback and collaborative student projects, very few implemented student-generated ePortfolios or collaboration beyond the confines of the LMS (Learning Management System). Institutional change requires a significant catalyst, and not merely a momentary change or the viscosity and elasticity of the structures and procedures will simply reabsorb any changes after the catalyst is removed. However, in the on-going age of COVID19 (post-covid19 statements seem somewhat premature at present) there is a significant catalyst for transformative change for how educational systems and institutions engage with technology and the new pedagogies that new technologies enable – in light of this my question is:

What if higher education actually focused upon the principles of Heutagogy: developing creativity, collaboration, open educational research and practice and building authentic learning communities?

Higher education could:

  • Build student capabilities to navigate the unknown
  • Enable Academics to become change agents that model an openness to facilitate student-centred learning rather than delivery and control of the learning content and environment
  • Design Assessment strategies that become personalisable and follow individual learner goals that lead to a variety of graduate outcomes relevant to environments into which the students will graduate.
  • Design Courses to broker student and lecturer active participation in authentic international communities of practice
  • Support the scholarship of teaching and learning through receiving the same level of funding as discipline-based research
  • Measure research impact by the authenticity of the contribution to the international community enabled by the research rather than academic citations
  • Facilitate collaborative learning design teams that include: researchers, practitioners, developers, students, and professionals
  • Focus upon quality learning rather than economies of scale
  • Enable all students and staff to have equitable access to current technologies   

Bibliography (Sources of inspiration and further reading):

Ecclesfield, N., & Garnett, F. (Eds.). (2021). Digital Learning: Architectures of Participation. IGI Global. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-7998-4333-7

Moore, R. L. (2020, 2020/07/02). Developing lifelong learning with heutagogy: contexts, critiques, and challenges. Distance Education, 41(3), 381-401. https://doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2020.1766949  

Blaschke, L. M., & Hase, S. (2019). Heutagogy and digital media networks: Setting students on the path to lifelong learning. Pacific Journal of Technology Enhanced Learning, 1(1), 1-14. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.24135/pjtel.v1i1.1  

Hase, S., & Kenyon, C. (2007). Heutagogy: a child of complexity theory. Complicity: an International Journal of Complexity and Education, 4(1), 111-118. https://doi.org/doi.org/10.29173/cmplct8766  

Hase, S., & Kenyon, C. (2001). From Andragogy to Heutagogy. ultiBASE Articles(December), 1-10. http://www.psy.gla.ac.uk/~steve/pr/Heutagogy.html  

Montessori, M. (1948). The discovery of the child (2004 ed.). Aakar Books. http://www.amazon.com/gp/search?index=books&linkCode=qs&keywords=8187879238  

Narayan, V., Herrington, J., & Cochrane, T. (2019). Design principles for heutagogic learning: Implementing student-determined learning with mobile and social media tools. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology (AJET), 35(3), 86-101. https://doi.org/10.14742/ajet.3941

#SCMALT & SOTEL Overview from @MarenDeepwell at #ALTC

Although I couldn’t be at the #ALTC Conference in Manchester this year, it was great to get a shout-out from @MarenDeepwell in her keynote address while overviewing the impact of research in technology enhanced learning (or the Scholarship of Technology Enhanced Learning, SOTEL) as one of the distinctives of Senior CMALT (SCMALT).

Thanks Maren!

It was also great to see mentions of many of my international colleagues as well such as @catherinecronin

Hoping to see many more colleagues recognised as CMALT and SCMALT in the future – join us on the journey of building an international community at http://cmaltcmooc.wordpress.com

Joining the #SOTELnz Research Cluster

Joining the SOTEL Research Cluster
The SOTEL (Scholarship Of Technology Enhanced Learning) research clusters are designed to provide a hub for academics to build a community of researchers and a showcase of their scholarly research into their teaching practice. We welcome participants from any discipline context to join us and form associated research cluster groups at http://sotel.nz
We officially launched the SOTEL Research Cluster Group at the inaugural SOTEL Symposium on 15th February at AUT South Campus. We hope you will put the SOTEL Symposium in your annual event calendar!
To join the SOTEL Research cluster:
First signup to the WordPress site at the Join the Community! link http://sotel.nz/register/ and then Login once you have created a username and password at http://sotel.nz/wp-login.php
Next find the Research Cluster Group that you would like to join on the Groups page http://sotel.nz/groups/  and choose ‘Join Group’. Each group will have 1-2 Admins/Moderators who can manage and modify the group settings.
We aim to hold monthly online chats and webinars for the SOTEL research cluster groups, and will be running the CMALT cMOOC and MOSOMELT cMOOC again soon in 2018 if you are interested in participating.
Note if you are planning on submitting your CMALT portfolio the next submission date for CMALT Portfolio accreditation is 1 June 2018. The CMALT cMOOC is designed to create a supportive community of people exploring and building their CMALT eportfolios. http://cmaltcmooc.wordpress.com
The MOSOMELT cMOOC is designed for participants to explore the potential of mobile social media in higher education http://mosomelt.wordpress.com

#MESH360 project team wins VC’s 2017 Teaching Innovation Award #sotelnz

The #Mesh360 team: Stuart Cook, Stephen Aiello, Thomas Cochrane won the 2017 Auckland University of Technology’s Vice-Chancellor’s Teaching Excellence, Teaching Innovation Award. You can find out more about the #Mesh360 project at: