I remember sitting in a lecture when I was completing my teaching degree back in 2000. The lecturer said something that struck a chord. He said “education is a conversation” and asked us to let that idea sink in. I wish that I could remember more but I’m ashamed to admit that I don’t even recall the lecturer’s name. Nonetheless, his message continues to deeply resonate with me, impacting my work nearly 20 years later. His point was that education is not a one way street. It’s not a monologue but a dialogue; a back-and-forth between the generations that has been playing out across the ages. Our place, he said, was to join that conversation at the most formal level for our time; as teachers. The irony that the medium for this message was a one-way lecture was not lost on me. Yet that medium did nothing to diminish the potency of his message. Over the years, I’ve wondered about the extent to which the medium can influence the message and thus impact education. Through the lens of viewing education as a conversation, I watched as the pace of technological advancements and disruptions continued to gain speed. Today, we bear […]
Industry for Real!
In August, Elissa was a panellist at the Industry is Real session. It was a great opportunity to showcase the Media Comms short course and the great videos that we create and produce. […]
Think Tank series – Responding to industry needs
The VE Design team is continuing to host its series of think tanks to explore the future of VET and what today’s top designers are working on right now. The third gathering in our series was held on 26 July and focused on the advantages and opportunities created by effective delivery of material online. The question we put forward was “What is the best way to structure our programs to meet the changing needs of students and industry?” Three experts from various organisations joined us: Damala Scales Ghosh – The Learning Hook Peter Mellow – Eastern Health Miriam Reynoldson – Chisholm online We began the session with this quote: “Learning Design is a bit like teenage sex. Everybody says they’re doing it, but in reality few really are; and those who are doing it aren’t doing it very well.” Mark Brown, Professor and Director of the National Institute for Digital Learning, Dublin City University Laughter followed, as did some sad reflection on our own teenage years. Damala raised these key points: Change is now! Technology is driving rapid industry change and industry is driving rapid changes in technology Real world skills- VET provides real skills for real jobs […]
Good luck Michael!
The VE Design Team is very sad to say goodbye to one of our founding members. Michael joined the team for our first project, Certificate III in Individual Support in late August 2017. Michael’s work was instrumental in establishing our framework and templates that is now the basis of all of the team’s work. Michael has a passion for accessibility in design and worked hard to ensure our work is best practice in this area. It was Michael’s dedication and enthusiasm that lead us to winning a Platinum LearnX Award for Best Accessibility Project. Our loss is Federation University’s gain. We wish Michael all the best in his new role there. Although, at heart, we know Michael will always be part of our skunk team. […]
Think Tank Series – Assessment
The VE design team recently hosted a think tank event on the future of assessment in VET with the focus being “What do the changing nature of work and advances in technology mean for assessment in VET, skills and industry training?” We were joined by four experts from various organisations: Rita Chiu – Assessment Innovation Manager at Pearson Chris Ho – Teaching and Learning Specialist at Box Hill Institute Kerrie-Anne Sommerfeld – Owner of Rubric Training Solutions Matt Peachey – Managing Director at the Learning Resources Group As technology, industry needs and skill requirements rapidly change, what are we going to do about it? Our discussions raised the following key points: Process vs. event: do we view assessment as a holistic process, blurring the lines of formative and summative tasks, or stay with the more traditional event, which learning is to build up to? Audit and compliance: is writing assessments with audit compliance in mind fair, or should there be greater focus on ensuring language is appropriate and tasks are clear for students? Student clarity: The need to ensure students clearly know what they are required to do (simple, yet often missed in assessment development), and the […]
Think Tank Series #1 – AR / VR
The VE Design team is hosting a series of think tanks to explore the future of VET and ensure that our designing is based on current evidence and ideas. The first gathering in our series was held on 9 May and focused on the use of augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) in VET. The question we put forward was “How will VR/AR impact and be used in VET, industry and skills training in the future?” Six experts from various organisations joined us: Pauline Farrell – Pearson Brenden Carter – The Learning Hook Scott Wallace – Box Hill Institute Nathan Beattie – Virtualex Ben Loveridge – Melbourne University Cassie De Colling – A Common Thread Each panellist shared their experiences which included the use of AR in construction; the use of VR to bring people with spinal cord injuries together; VR film making; and the changing landscape of work and its effects on training. Lively discussion followed. We explored the potential to use AR/VR for assessment to simulate tasks that would otherwise be costly, high risk, or require additional participants to test. In the aged care sector, for instance, AR/VR could be used to assess a student’s skills and knowledge relating to […]
Visit to Vision Australia
On a windy Friday 13th the VE Design Team were lucky enough to spend the morning at Vision Australia’s recently redesigned headquarters in Kooyong. The chief activity was to experience their virtual reality activity; to see what’s possible and effective for building Augmented and Virtual Reality (AR/VR) experiences into our courses notably the VR experiences our team are creating for the Future Social Services Institute project. The activity Vision Australia developed used an Oculus Rift to offer a seated activity which simulated different degenerative and visual impairments. Vision Australia’s Cate Keane walked us through the scenario and what it aimed to achieve. Using analog methods to recreate eye conditions, the 3D immersive activity provided us with an experience, and greater understanding, of vision impairment. The task required us to assume the role of an older man with macular degeneration who was trying to contact his daughter via Skype. It brilliantly illustrated this as a difficult task, attempted in a typical living room with poor lighting. The activity required us to then attempt the activity after several assistive technologies and improved lighting had been applied. These interventions are typical of the recommendations Vision Australia would make to improve the accessibility of the […]
The Hero’s Journey
Attending the iDesignX conference in Sydney on Tuesday (27 March 2018), I listened to a range of interesting presentations from experts in the learning design field. Conversations included the usual topics: blended learning, gamification, virtual reality and mobile responsiveness. For me and (gauging by the standing room only in the packed conference room) many other delegates, one presentation stood out from the crowd – ‘Storytelling for Behavioural Change’ by Nick Petch, Lead eLearning Designer from Inspire Group. Petch aligned the narrative of the ‘hero’s journey’ with a behavioural change model to show how the power of the story can be harnessed for learning. Why is this relevant? Because, as Petch pointed out, stories are powerful learning tools as they stay alive and are remembered. We started with the concept of the hero’s journey based Joseph Campbell’s book ‘The Hero With a Thousand Faces’ (1949). Following on from earlier work, Campbell analysed a range of narratives such as myths and folk tales. He identified a pattern to the mythical hero’s journey that takes the hero through three identifiable stages: departure – occurring in the ordinary world initiation – occurring in the special world return – occurring back in the ordinary world. […]
Rich Content Page Builder
As part of the journey of building for the Certificate III in Individual Support we realised our team needed to build a large suite of inter-activities for text heavy content. Six months ago, RMIT was rolling out Instructure Canvas university wide, the implementation was in it’s infancy, and very little customisation was available that would give content the appeal to keep students engaged. Despite being an online learning system, Canvas permits the embedding of limited front end technologies. These are the things that make online content sing. Simple click and reveal events were permitted but not others. The Canvas WYSIWYG editor will strip most css and javascript and only permit text, images and tables. From a learning design perspective, this is difficult. Especially for the subject matter on ethics, law, regulations and procedures in aged care and disability services. Some of this content is quite dry, but important to deliver as part of accreditation requirements. Making it engaging was our mandate. We decided to build our interactive content and embed directly into Canvas using iframes. We built a system to make iframes work cleanly in Canvas (you can read about it here), and went to work building a page builder […]
Load Reduction Instruction
LRI involves more direct/explicit instruction than has been fashionable in recent decades, during which constructivist approaches such as discovery-, problem- and enquiry-based learning have been favoured (Kirschner, Sweller, & Clark, 2006). CLT states that while a student is processing new information, asking them to simultaneously solve open-ended problems, conduct research, collaborate, etc. (hallmarks of constructivist pedagogy) creates excessive demands on working memory (Kirschner, Sweller, & Clark, 2006). Instead, LRI works through a sequence in which initial learning involves ample direct instruction to convey new knowledge/skills. This is followed by supported, scaffolded practice wherein students are led through activities with ever-diminishing scaffolding. Finally, once students have had sufficient instruction and guided practice, they are ready for more open activities or ‘guided autonomy’. The last/third stage of LRI incorporates constructivist approaches, such as discovery-, problem- and enquiry-based learning. In this sense, unlike some proponents of CLT who have steadfastly opposed constructivist pedagogies (Kirschner, Sweller, & Clark, 2006), LRI rather postpones them to a later stage in the learning sequence. By applying LRI, we can assist students in transferring new information from short-term working memory to schemas in long-term memory, ultimately facilitating expert-like automaticity within a domain. References Centre for Education Statistics and […]
