:Victoria University E-Learning Blog

Ascilite, the Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education, will be having their annual conference next week. It will be my first Ascilite conference. They have the reputation of being a more upbeat than its northern hemisphere sister Alt-C.

The theme for this year is ‘Who’s Learning? Whose Technology?’, and the conference papers say this year will be about understanding the needs of a diversifying population. I find it a bit curious that Ascilite talks about a diversifying population, rather than a diversifying population in Higher Education. I’m sure all will become clear next week.

As I usually have my MacBook surgically attached to me you can expect some regular updates to the blog during the course of the conference. The conference will also be podcasting their proceedings and I’ll put the link on the blog next week.

Have a great weekend

David

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FLU is happy to announce we now have a pilot Elgg installation up and running – thanks to the mighty Asim Aziz who installed Elgg, configured the powerlink and irons out the bugs as we find them.  Elgg is “social networking” software – it allows users to blog, collaborate, share files, host podcasts, create online communities, wikis and lots more besides.

Elgg will be powerlinked to Blackboard/WebCT.  This means that you as teachers will be able to have an elgg community space for your course or unit, and you can create elgg spaces independent of units. Some examples of use – spaces for research collaboration/communication, spaces for blogging for yourself, your unit or department, spaces for areas of interest in teaching or other work practices at VU.   Depending on the pilot project, VU may allow students to create their own elgg spaces and communities for example for clubs and societies, or for student circles or learning groups, etc.

Elgg (and other types of social networking technology) is a radical departure from traditional (Web 1.0/eLearning 1.0) type technologies – authorship is decentralised, students/teachers can be equal participants, students can create their own areas and communities, elgg networked communities grow organically.  For example, wikis (like wikipedia) could be used by students to develop a growing, changing knowledge artefact for a subject or subject area.

If you want to start to try using elgg, email me and I will give you the setup information.  However, bear in mind that Elgg is a pilot project at the moment – this means that technical support, training and advice from FLU will be very ad hoc and dependent upon our other work priorities.  Basically this is a way of saying use at your own risk!  Also, it means that because we are coming to grips with the social networking paradigm, pilot users will be expected to do things like use the online page help, go to the elgg documentation site to do their own research on how to use elgg and so on.

Elgg is currently only accessible from VU net – it is not yet available on the open internet.

More information on Elgg is available here:  http

A mature working Elgg community is here http://elgg.net
University of Brighton in the UK has an evolving elgg installation at http://community.brighton.ac.uk/public.php

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There have been changes to FLU recently. Antony Marsh has moved from Quality and Innovation to Flexible Learning, though he continues in his role of e-learning trainer; Asim Aziz our online learning administrator has moved from Sunbury, and joins the wider team based at Newport. I myself joined FLU, as the new Head of Unit in the middle of August. I come hot footed from the UK where I was based in the Unit for the Enhancement for Learning and Teaching, at the University of Kent.

Last week we had a planning day, where we discussed our Operational Plan. This will obviously be informed by the eLearning Stategy and the TLS operational plan. I hope to get this plan out for consultation quite soon, amongst our colleagues in Higher Ed. and TAFE. Part of that plan will be around community and the creation of forums and communities of practice. A couple of examples of what we are hoping to do is the setting up of communities around e-learning, where we’ll showcase what’s new, and interesting in the area; I also hope to have a conference early next year on e-learning where we can have practitioner input from both VU and outside.

We are always happy to talk to staff about e-learning and any assistance we can give! Contact any of the team, or myself.

David

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The Flexible Learning Unit, in the Staff College, are currently looking in the uses of blogs in education. As a way getting communities of practice together, ways that blogs can be used by students in TAFE and Higher Education.

As usual nothing is particularly easy, or straight forward so we are trying out several different Blogging Applications. This one is made through Edublog, which I’ve been using for a while.

The project is actually being managed by Antony Marsh, who is one of the guys who deals with online learning in the Flexible Learning Unit. If you want to be involved in any projects that are coming up to do with blogs drop him a line – he’s in the eguide.

This blog, or a blog like it will be a place where FLU can float ideas on elearning, technological advances, upcoming projects, and just general information and discussion.

The team will contribute to the Blog – hopefully the wider VU community will contribute.

David Cummings
(Head of FLU)

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