February 4th, 2010 by Mark Smithers
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PhD Ceremony by Venet_
I saw a job advertised recently as a Lecturer/Senior Lecturer in the Institute of Teaching and Learning at Deakin University. The role revolves around working with academic staff to improve their teaching and learning practice, provide staff development, evaluation of teaching, dissemination of good practice, provide educational technology leadership and lots of the standard stuff about networking, planning, contributing to the web site etc. So, you might say, a fairly standard central academic development role. » Read more: Is a PhD really necessary?
January 13th, 2010 by Mark Smithers
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ePortfolio graphic by Richard Cawood
I’ve argued for a while that, whilst I agree with the idea of eportfolios as a way of demonstrating student learning, I have a few concerns about the way that some universities have implemented eportfolios. I have always believed that an eportfolio should ‘belong’ to the student user and should be independant of the university. Ideally it will be a space in the cloud that the student can use across many institutions as they continue their life long learning activities both academic and professional. » Read more: Goodbye to eportfolios for a fee?
January 3rd, 2010 by Mark Smithers
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Well it’s the end of the decade and the new one has just started. I thought that, in the name of a harmless bit of fun, I would stick my neck out and make a few predictions about where we might be going with edtech in universities over the next decade. I’ve kept it brief because to explain each one in detail would make this post unbearably long and each subject probably deserves a more detailed post to fully explain my thinking. They also aren’t in any particular order. Let’s see if you agree or not. » Read more: The Decade Ahead in Higher EdTech
December 9th, 2009 by Mark Smithers
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/cyberslayer/2535502341/sizes/l/ by Howard Gees
I was watching the Twitter stream for the ASCILITE 2009 conference this morning during the final keynote from @jamesclay with a certain amount of dismay as tweets regarding the ‘Innovation Prevention Department’ (IPD) started to appear. The reference was to IT Services organisations in tertiary education. Now I wasn’t at the conference so I don’t know the context of the IPD in James’s talk but I do feel the need to comment on this notion of innovation prevention by IT Departments [Edit: 10 December, 2009. Please see James's comments about context - in fact the notion of an IPD may be any organisational unit within a tertiary education institution]. Some of you may be aware that I am a senior IT Manager for one of Australia’s largest universities (70,000 headcount, 46,000 EFTSU). I normally only comment on general educational technology issues and not work related matters. I am going to make an exception this time.
I have worked with and for six universities in the UK and Australia over the last twenty years. The last eleven months have been my first in a central IT organisation. Previously I spent ten years as a lecturer and the rest of my time as a software developer/consultant/contractor/elearning manager. Prior to my current position it is fair to say that I have been reasonably critical of central IT organisations in tertiary education. It was a mutual dislike. A group that I once worked in was described as ‘rogue programmers’ by the university Director of IT. We, in turn, thought of them as being risk averse, conservative, slow and rigid.
» Read more: Direct from the Innovation Prevention Department
November 30th, 2009 by Mark Smithers
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Just to let you all know that I have added another two universities to the list publically available LMS evaluations bring the total to ten. You can find the full list here.
November 19th, 2009 by Mark Smithers
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I noticed a reference to Moodle LMP in my Twitter stream tonight and, wondering what an LMP actually was, I ended up at this post by Mary Bold talking about upcoming conferences.
» Read more: Say Hello to the Newest TLA on the Block – LMP
November 6th, 2009 by Mark Smithers
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This very interesting discussion was held recently at the Educause 2009 Conference in Denver. » Read more: BlackBoard, Sakai and Moodle – Point/Counterpoint at Educause 2009
November 5th, 2009 by Mark Smithers
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This is the content of an email that has been distributed about PhD Scholarships at RMIT University. For more information you can contact » Read more: Social and cultural aspects of the Internet (PhD scholarships, Melbourne)
October 19th, 2009 by Mark Smithers
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Well it’s been a week since I was kindly sent an invitation to Google Wave. I have to admit that at first I was a little underwhelmed but since then, as I have started to add contacts, I I have started to see it’s potential. Before I talk a bit about it’s positives I would like to try and answer what I think it actually is in one sentence.
» Read more: Google Wave in a Sentence
October 7th, 2009 by Mark Smithers
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