Student engagement – Page 2 – Music for Deckchairs

The time we give each other

Kate Bowles December 8, 2012 7 Comments

In the second week of the new summer course, we spent the day together in class. Because summer in Australia is already snapped in two by Christmas, a whole lot of other weirdness can go on while no one’s looking, so we’re flipping the normal timetable and going with two all-day workshops supported by online reflections and activities. Thanks to Steve Wheeler, I’ve also discovered that we’re also haphazardly and instinctively following a primer on the 10 characteristics of authentic…

Being an academic, Edtech and online learning, Student engagement

With friends like these

Kate Bowles September 27, 2012 6 Comments

Here’s a little grenade-with-the-pin-out that was rolled towards Australia’s university lecturers today by the Minister for Communications, Broadband, and the Digital Economy, Stephen Conroy. Under the alarmist heading that Australian Universities Must Adapt, Senator Conroy popped this question: “What is a lecture worth if the best lecturer in the world at MIT is online for free for all to access?” Really—that’s it? After all we’ve heard about MOOCs revolutionising higher education, it comes down to this crude bit of cost-benefit…

Being an academic, Casualisation of work, Higher education, Student engagement

Learning from failure

Kate Bowles May 6, 2012 7 Comments

The problem with edtech evangelism is that it assumes the most valuable lessons are learned from other people’s success. This is why our lives fill up with stories of exciting tools that have transformed this that or the other thing. Exhausting, really. Given the importance of failure to innovation, it’s interestingly rare to find blogs, lists, journals, or conferences focused on failure, in any field. The Ten Most Awful Mistakes in Online Course Design. Ten Tools I’ll Never Try Again. …

Change management, Edtech and online learning, LMS evaluation, Student engagement

Flip this

Kate Bowles April 25, 2012 4 Comments

Here’s an innocent little grenade-with-the-pin-out question rolled into the conversation about whether TED-ED has provided us with a whole new way of engaging students by moving content out of class time: on the same day, Plashing Vole is asking whether we shouldn’t be making attendance at conventional university lectures compulsory? It looks like exactly the kind of retro thinking that academics get accused of, given how much we hear about flipping, collaborative learning, students as producers etc. It could be dismissed…

Higher education, Student engagement

The hardest part

Kate Bowles March 28, 2012 3 Comments

OK, so here’s a quick follow-up on yesterday’s post about Blackboard’s complex rebranding of itself as an open source visionary. Phil Hill thinks this isn’t the key point, and I feel that he’s right. As I mentioned yesterday, Ray Henderson has issued a significant challenge to higher education, in the form of an offer “to solve the hardest problems in education, comprehensively.” Educators are really familiar with being the experience of being told that we have a problem that someone…

Casualisation of work, Change management, Edtech and online learning, Higher education, LMS evaluation, Student engagement

Stuck in the middle

Kate Bowles March 7, 2012 9 Comments

There’s something bothering me about the interesting project pulled together by Jeff Young at The Chronicle, intended to demonstrate that today’s college students are bored with yesterday’s lecturing tactics. In January, Jeff asked students to video their thoughts on the traditional lecture experience. Here’s his compilation of some of their responses: [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBwiX8EwBGs] I don’t particularly disagree with anything the students say, and I really like that they took the trouble to video their thoughts and send them in. Honestly,…

Risk, Student engagement

People we like

Kate Bowles February 15, 2012 5 Comments

Right at this moment I’m failing to feel sympathetic towards colleagues who’ve made university marketing communications their career. Please understand, if you’re in marketing, that none of this is personal. As an academic, I know what it’s like to have my professional practice be the topic of everyone else’s reformist idealism. And I do appreciate that my own employment depends on the work you do year round to ensure that there are students for me to teach. In fact, I’m…

Higher education, Student engagement, University marketing

Turtles hatching

Kate Bowles January 25, 2012 2 Comments

Amid all the excitement about whether or not Apple have revolutionized textbooks, or reformed the whole planetary education system, or are just pressuring schools and families to buy iPads,* my colleagues are planning to launch three hundred first year university students into public blogging. Might as well do this while everyone’s busy looking the other way. It’s a complicated decision in terms of future digital waste. And then there’s social risk. There are people who don’t want to be identified…

Higher education, Student engagement

Step right up

Kate Bowles January 15, 2012 3 Comments

I’ve been asked why I’m so bothered by the invitation to sit in a dunk tank as part of our orientation activities for new students. Surely dunk tanks fall into the category of harmless fun? Don’t they? OK, here are a few reasons, without even beginning to think about their resonance among students who’ve had enough of high school because of the bullying and are hoping for something better from higher education. First, this is how they’re promoted: Does Dunking…

Being an academic, Higher education, Student engagement, University marketing

… and the ugly

Kate Bowles January 6, 2012 0 Comments

What to make of this morning’s news that a senior academic in an administrative position breached anti-solicitation guidelines at the University of Sydney? Well, first of all, it’s not as colourful as it sounds. Noirish images come to mind, but the reality is more pedestrian. Faced with the need to boost enrolments, a department with an elite reputation based on a restrictive entry requirement made the decision to fish outside their exclusion zone. More than 100 students who had made…

Higher education, Risk, Student engagement