Program

Richard Barker, Bronwyn Burles, Kevin Lyall, Bob Wylie

In this presentation, members of the Community of Practice from different faculties will outline the type of work they do to support academics and students. They will highlight innovative practices and successful use of technology to support learning and teaching in an everchanging educational environment.

Dr Brady Robards

In this presentation, Dr Brady Robards will resist the notion that synchronous ‘face-toface’ contact is unavailable as an important pedagogical tool in distance education. Current technology makes multi-user videoconferencing and live lecture broadcast increasingly available to many of our students, and provides important opportunities for students to develop a deeper sense of connection to both peers and instructors, which is vital to retention and success.

Brady will draw upon examples of small group Google Hangout video conferencing alongside live lecture broadcast (with chat feedback) in the delivery of a sociology unit. The limitations and resource implications are considered in the framing of this approach that opens a range of opportunities for our students and the University.

Michael Perry

This year MyLO moves to Version 10.4 and MyLO Manager to Version 3. These are the first major updates since MyLO was introduced in 2013. This presentation will focus on what these updates mean for users in terms of the new features and new teaching approaches. The audience will be invited to suggest changes they would like to see implemented as part of these major updates.

Mark Zasadny

Medication management is considered a cornerstone of safe nursing practice. It is imperative that nurses demonstrate the ability to safely and accurately calculate, dispense, administer and critically reflect upon medication management.

This presentation demonstrates improvements in the learning and retention of medication management principles for undergraduate nursing students in a unit that uses innovative graphic design, the contextualisation of unit content through clinical reasoning interactions and technology-based assessment materials.

Rebecca Foweraker

Blackboard Collaborate 2015 is the improved web-conferencing environment scheduled for release in the second half of 2015. Our current web-conferencing product, Collaborate v12.6, receives many support requests from staff and students who have difficulty using it. It is expected that all participants will find the new HTML5-based system easier to use. This session will showcase the new user interface, the new mobile version and the improved functionality of the new product.

Dr Chris Burke, Dr James Haddy, Cher Harte, Jon Schrepfer

This presentation showcases the development and utilisation of digital technology within the laboratory teaching space for a blended learning experience. A combination of software and hardware solutions has enabled delivery of laboratory-based teaching exercises across dual campuses.

The capture and publication of laboratory demonstrations on MyLO allows students and staff to flexibly access the learning materials. The ‘plug and play’ ability of the system allows the use of ELMO book readers, digital cameras (fitted onto dissecting and compound microscopes) and HD video cameras. The presentation illustrates ways in which accessible technology can be meaningfully integrated into biological laboratories to provide solutions for the growing demands of students.

Stephen Linquist, Professor Megan Quentin-Baxter

A panel of UTAS staff, drawn from teaching, technology, online support and policy making, will share their perspectives on ‘technology enhanced learning and teaching’ (TELT). Hear a range of contrasting views on the role expectations and the challenges posed by the new UTAS blended learning environment. The session will conclude with some unplugged crystal ball reflections on the future of our endeavours.

Vanessa Warren, Luke Padgett, Tony Carew

The ‘Sharing Learning Resources Project’ aims to establish a staff culture of sharing learning resources. The Learning Object Repository (a customised Equella interface) provides a user-friendly public repository for University staff to contribute to and access learning resources. This presentation will discuss some of the challenges of this process and how these were overcome. Following the Pilot phase the team will evaluate the outcomes to feed into recommendations for ongoing support of the LOR from 2016.

Leah Chandler

Active Learning Platform (ALP) is the new, updated cloud version of Echo360’s lecture capture solution, which UTAS employs under the branding name MyMedia Service. ALP will take over as the lecture capture production system from December 2015. The current product will be archived.

Get advanced access to the product, see the new user interface and try out the new features. Experience the new Active Learning Platform for yourself at Tech Ex.

Dr Gemma Lewis and Chris Rattray

Dr Gemma Lewis will talk about the experience of video recording and editing her lectures in the Tom Fink Studio with the assistance of Chris Rattray and a Senior Educational Technologist from her faculty. These video lectures formed part of a flipped-classroom approach for BMA116 Communication for Business Professionals, in Semester 1, 2015 (in the Tasmanian School of Business and Economics). Gemma will discuss the pros and cons of using this technology and approach and share what her students think of lecture content being delivered in this innovative way.

Ralph Alexander

Lync Enterprise Voice will be rolled out in the third quarter of this year to replace the obsolete PABX technology.

This presentation will focus on the implications of this move toward Unified Communications and what it has to offer staff and students at the University of Tasmania.

Damien Collins and Kellie Brandenburg

One of the Student Transition and Retention (STaR) team’s key functions is to provide orientation for commencing UTas students. Previously, online students have taken a back seat when it comes to providing a live orientation session; instead, the team has relied on using static websites and emails to provide information to this cohort. Given that our online students are a growing area, it was decided that this cohort deserved a much richer experience for orientation. Starting in 2014, the STaR team has been delivering live Online Orientation to these cohorts via Blackboard Collaborate. Damien and Kellie will discuss the pros and cons of this, and ways they hope to enrich the experience for future commencing students.

Ralph Alexander

The provision of Wireless access on University campuses has been beset by issues such as ease of access, coverage (black holes) and speed. In this presentation, Ralph Alexander, Manager Network Services, will outline the three-year plan for the development of the network, discuss the approaches and tools that are being used to combat the issues and describe some of the uses that are being made of the technology across the University sector.

Dr Ivan Bindoff

Simulated learning experiences are an integral part of higher education for health professionals. Students are able to practise what are typically high-risk activities in realistic settings, without any chance of causing harm.

Dr Ivan Bindoff and his team have developed a simulated community pharmacy that allows students to practise the entirety of a patient encounter, from presentation at the pharmacy through to counselling and dispensing medicines. This presentation will introduce you to the highly flexible software that allows clinical educators to write their own custom scenarios to meet their specific learning objectives, and provide detailed feedback to the student. The software, which is integrated into the BPharm degree at UTAS, has been successfully evaluated, is being trialled by the University of Newcastle, and is attracting interest in the USA.

Dr Stuart Crispin and Tam Lynch

This presentation will explore the Tasmanian School of Business and Economics (TSBE) teaching experience with online submission and marking of assignments. TSBE moved to mandatory online assignment submission in 2012, which encouraged staff to mark and return assignments to students through MyLO using the rubrics tool and TurnItIn Grademark. This presentation will explore some of the lessons learned in marking electronically, and the perceived benefits for staff and students in this style of marking.

Tony Carew, Dr Carolyn King

In an environment of competing pressures and few resources, academics rarely have time to focus on the design of impactful, attractive, engaging and accessible online content. The Faculty of Health has developed the Interactive Content Builder (ICB) to support academics in designing high-quality educational resources and high-impact online learning experiences efficiently and easily.

The ICB enables the provision of interactive content, including formative assessment, which articulates with MyLO functionality. This presentation outlines the challenges of adhering to academic standards while flexibly accommodating a broad range of content, delivering sustainable support for a growing client base, and evaluating the impact of the ICB for staff and students.

Dr John Kertesz

The School of Education will soon have to integrate ePortfolios across all teacher training courses in line with the professional requirement that graduates exit with an ePortfolio of evidence of their performance against the Australian Professional Teaching Standards. The implementation of Teacher Performance Expectations (TPE) at UTAS means that academics may soon have to mirror the skills expected of their graduates.

This presentation will identify the limitations university teachers will confront when trying to use the current ePortfolio technology to portray their achievement of TPE over time. These are the same limitations that are impacting now on students trying to evidence graduate professional standards, and which may influence the future accreditation of University of Tasmania pre-service teacher training courses.

James Biddle

ClickView is running now as a three month trial at the University. James will demonstrate some of the features.

You can record 18 free-to-air digital channels. Saved videos can be downloaded as MP4s, edited to capture specific segments and embedded into learning management platforms.