Thursday, October 03, 2013

National Tertiary Learning and Teaching conference- day 2 morning

Day 2 begins with workshops. I attend Bronwyn Hegarty's on 'open education practices.' The group is separated into 3 groups to work out the good, bad and downright ugly of 'open education'. Lively discussions emerge from each group.

Parallel sessions follow. First up Brian Tuck with 'mindfulness'. Began with a youtube video on 'what i mindfulness?' When we pay attention to how we pay attention, we find it is actually quite difficult to sustain attention. we practise how to breathe, to enhance mindfulness.

Then Jo Rhodes with 'learning is not a spectator sport - avoiding just another lecture. An active session modelling the premise of the presentation, the student needs to do the work to do the learning. Strategies include: make a large class feel small, encourage questions, be available, learn students names, relate lectures and discussions to actual or potential student experiences, pay attention to individual students,  consider your self presentation and give personalised feedback. Important to plan before the lecture, how you will begin, what activities and 'energy shifts' will be used, learning styles to allow for, materials to be used and what happens after lecture.

Third up I catch up with Aidan Bigham's presentation (on Prezi) as I was presenting in the opposite stream at Qingdao. Aidan shares 'teaching engineering geology in a blended inverted classroom. Inverted classrom akin to flipped classrom, using multimedia resources through blended learning. Went through advantages and disadvantages. Change of heavily content focused approach to meeting student learning outcomes. Used OTARA model to ground planning - objectives, activities, resources and assessment. Student evaluations show higher engagement and increase in students' motivation to take responsibility for their learning.


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