LAMS Chat and Forum were used to conduct in-class online conversations with second year university students to raise the level of engagement with their compulsory class texts. These discussions overcame students’ reluctance to speak up in class, avoided the conversation being dominated by one or two of their classmates, could accommodate simultaneous small groups and moved the discussion to a student-centred activity. As LAMS Chat and Forum retains all previous history, students’ contributions could be reviewed at any time and formally assessed. The marked improvement in the students’ engagement with the texts has ensured the discussions will continue to be included in the program.
A number of projects teams are currently developing tools that use generic templates to share and reuse good teaching practice. They hope to introduce educators to the learning design process so that they might develop their own effective and pedagogically sound learning activities. In this way, they are encouraging the sharing and reuse of good practice in teaching and learning without requiring lecturers to become experts in learning design or theory.
In the “Implementing Effective Learning Designs” project a framework and design guidelines were created to provide a comprehensive scaffold to assist academics in the development of inspiring learning design examples and supportive activities. Learning design templates were developed that can be used by academic staff to tailor exemplary examples to meet particular requirements, whilst providing them with the underlying pedagogical principals involved in the learning design. The implementation of learning designs was also explored and barriers identified to their widespread adoption and ways of overcoming these. This paper outlines the theoretical underpinnings that supported the project.
Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for teaching and learning are continually changing and being replaced by the newest “must have” technologies, so how valuable are skillsbased technology courses in the long-term to pre-service teachers? While pre-service teachers need to be competent and confident users of technology (Cowie & Jones 2005), the universities also need to provide them with knowledge about attitudes, values and pedagogical understanding in respect to ICTs (Cameron 2007). These pre-service teachers need to develop a fundamental understanding about the nature of technological change and their own abilities to confront this change (Phelps & Ellis 2003). It has also been determined that ICT-based courses will hold more long-term value for the pre-service teachers if they promote generic technology skills involving authentic, reflective activities that assist them in their continued learning throughout their careers (Herrington, Oliver & Herrington 1999). Therefore, rather than simply provide and deliver specific skills-based information, the lecturer’s principal function has shifted to create a collaborative, challenging and supportive learning environment within which students were introduced to a broad range of philosophical and pedagogical issues that arise from the integration of a variety of technologies in today’s classrooms (Herrington & Oliver 2002).
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