Writen by Sheena O'Hare and Mick Grimley
Presented by Sheena O'Hare and Gilly Salmon
Blackboard Teaching and Learning Conference, Swinburne Universtiy of Technology, Melbourne, 2013
More presentaions available at www.gillysalmon.com/presentations
Gilly SalmonPro Vice-Chancellor & Professor at University of Western Australia
2. Overview
• Start-up from Swinburne University
Perspective
– Written by Mick Grimley
– Spoken by Gilly Salmon
• Start-up from Swinburne Online Perspective
Sheena O’Hare
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Mick Grimley & Sheena O'Hare ANZ
Blackboard conference
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3. A New Partnership a New Discipline
• 2011 Swinburne Online (SOL) is
formed
• 100 per cent online delivery
• Students are Swinburne
University students
• First courses launched in March
2012
• First Teacher Education students
in November 2012
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4. Online Education: a market?
• Online education is growing exponentially:
– Top 4 adopters of self paced e-learning with 35% +
projected 5 yr growth rates are:
• Vietnam, Malaysia, Romania, Azerbaijan (Ambient,
2011)
• In 2010, 6.1 million students enrolled in at
least one online course (Allen & Semen, 2011)
• Over 1000 providers of online education in
Australia- although few are purely online (Ibis
World, 2012)
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5. Teacher Education
a New Discipline for Swinburne
Not currently taught at Swinburne
– No history of Teacher Education
– No Education Academics
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7. The Nature of Initial Teacher Education
• Regulated by the Victorian Institute of
Teaching (VIT) and the Australian Children’s
Education and care Quality Authority
(ACECQA)
– Practicums
– State Curriculum versus National Curriculum
– National Standards
• Personal Numeracy and Literacy Standards
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8. Current Offerings
• In November 2012 we
launched:
– Bachelor of Education (Early
Childhood)
– Master of Teaching
(Primary)
• In November 2013 we plan
to launch:
– Bachelor of Education
(Primary)
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9. Building a Team
• Very fast start-up
– The need to get people on the ground quickly
• Consolidating and planning for the future
– Appointing full-time seasoned academics
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10. Building the Programs and the Units
• Professor Gilly Salmon’s five stage model of
online learning (Salmon, 2011)
• Social constructivist approach
• Highly supported
• Tasks that mimic professional expectations
(realistic)
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www..e-moderating.com
11. Teaching Teacher Education Online
• Perceptions – F2F versus Online
• Professional practice
– Teacher as expert
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12. The teaching model at Swinburne
Online: recruiting e Learning
advisors
Teaching vacancies are advertised
through Seek
Telephone interview – Passion is crucial
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13. Development & Training
• 4 or 5 weeks online
• Based on Social Constructivism (Gilly Salmon’s
5-stage model)
• Challenge to ensure quality teachers allocated
into appropriate groups according to
qualifications
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www.e-moderating.com
14. Week by week break down
• Access and motivation (encouraged to get to
know their tutor and their peers)
• Online socialisation (encouraged to be active in
online activities that are created to support the
development of a learning community
• Information exchange (more cooperation and
time management)
• Knowledge construction (work together to
complete projects)
• Development (able to apply and integrate
knowledge into work place)
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15. Promotion of participation
• Effective online education differentiated from
distance education by opportunities for
participative opportunities.
• Effective online participation does not just
happen, it needs to be supported.
• Challenge to ensure that the participations lead to
desired learning outcomes
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16. Growth over time
• Accessible from anywhere; study can be
structured around job or family; and can be
streamlined, condensed or accelerated.
• Danger that technologies add a new layer of
complexity
• Isolation and disconnectedness can contribute
to student attrition
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17. Support for Students at Swinburne
Online
• E-learning Advisors
• Student Liaison Team (7 day
support)
• Practicum Placement Team
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18. Virtual academic support
• 140 E learning Advisors are based solely
online, around the world – Sri Lanka, Greece,
Scotland etc.
• Online networks set up to support – teaching
coaches – focus on working more efficiently
and effectively, not harder
• Blackboard staff lounge + Yammer private
social networking site
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19. Education Staff at Swinburne Online
• Program Director – quality of overall program
• Unit coordinator – unit management
• Learning designer – unit glitches and
clarification
• Learning technologist
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20. Unit Moderation through Partnership
• Internal moderation
• HD/Fail cross marking
• SUT/SOL moderation
• Leads into unit review
process
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21. Thanks for listening
Slides at
www.gilly.salmon.com
….Resources
…….Presentations
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22. “Never doubt the power of a small
group of people to change the world.
Nothing else ever has.”
Margaret Mead
“Be the change you want to see in the world”
Mahatma Ghandi
No budgets or humans were harmed in the making of this presentation
“Every society honours its live
conformists and its dead
troublemakers." Mignon
McLaughlin
Editor's Notes
Thanks you for attending our presentation
My name is Mick Grimley I’m an academic here at Swinburne and I’m the academic director of Teacher Education
My partner in crime today is Sheena O’Hare who is the program director of teacher education at Swinburne Online our partner company- and we’ll tell you more about that relationship as we go
We don’t intend to talk for 45 mins
We will aim for about 30 mins followed by questions
probably finish early
I know that it’s the dinner tonight
And just before we start I should just say that although we don’t specifically talk about Blackboard per se we do acknowledge that almost everything we do in our online courses is done in Bb
–and hopefully you’ll get chance to see one of our courses built in Bb later
Just a little bit about what we intend to cover in this session
I’m going to talk for about 15 mins from the perspective of starting up a new Teacher education discipline from the Swinburne University perspective
I’m going to talk a bit about starting Teacher Education from scratch from the academic perspective and some of the issues we’ve faced
Then Sheena will talk about it from the Swinburne online perspective (the more operational perspective)
So Swinburne Online was formed as a partnership between Swinburne University and Seek Ltd in 2011
SOL are a private company
All of the courses offered through SOL are purely online (with no F2F elements)
they began offering courses to students in March 2012
And we started offering Initial Teacher education courses in November 2012
As our partners Swinburne online are effectively our delivery arm
– that’s what they do well
– they provide quality online delivery and support to students
But the students are Swinburne University Students
Open University Australia and SEEK Limited are two organisations which compile the most online offerings in Australia, they enable potential students to find online course offerings relatively easily.
so you can see the benefits of the partnership
There are reports of a large growth in online education
surprisingly Vietnam, Malaysia, Romania and Azerbaijan have the largest projected growth rates
In 2010 there were 6.1 million Australians enrolled in online courses
and over 1000 online education providers
One of the benefits of online education is reported to be a higher profit margins than traditional delivery modes – approximately 8.8% of revenue compared to an average of 3.8% for all education.
So you can see that a partnership with Seek to provide online education has the potential to be lucrative
and there is a market
Mick was employed by Swinburne University in April of 2012
The aim was to introduce teacher Education as a discipline at Swinburne University
The catch was it needed to be done by November that year
The University had no history of Teacher Education
And few resources
Swinburne had 1 temporary Education staff member (an ex PhD student)
And one permanent Early Childhood educator form the TAFE sector
So I went from this – the view from my bedroom window in Christchurch, New Zealand (to this)
A very confusing maze, where I was asking:
Where do I start?
What do I do first?
How do I resource it?
And a thousand other questions
So I just quickly want to go through a little bit about Initial Teacher education as a discipline and the sorts of hoops we have to jump through to make it a viable course and some of the issues we were facing
It’s applied learning so we are educating students to become teachers
– this gives it a theoretical and practical aspect (professional practice)
The Victorian Institute of Teaching is the regulatory body in Victoria that approves all school aged Initial Teacher Education courses - Whereas ACECQA - the Australian Children’s Education and care Quality Authority - approves early Childhood Teaching courses
And to complicate matters from 2012 to 2013 Australia has just moved over to National Standards from State standards
And implemented a National Curriculum
One of the bombshells amongst the National Standards was the requirement that all graduates of Initial teacher education courses should have high Literacy and numeracy competency
– which of course is desired – as they are our future teachers,
but it presents a problem when you have to educate them about teaching and learning along with upskilling them in Literacy and Numeracy as well (this is one we’ve been wrangling with since the initial design stages)
And of courses we also have to get our courses internally accredited
We managed to get the courses written and accredited with existing staff (internal and external)
And in November 2012 we launched (above)
We also hope to offer (above) in November this year – just going through external accreditation
But of course it’s not just about getting our courses accredited
we also needed to have units developed to offer students and this is where it got tricky
effectively at the beginning of August last year we had very few academic staff to do this
And little time to appoint any
So what we appointed 7sessional staff on temporary contracts
- all registered teachers
And to get over the fact that we needed to develop units very very quickly we took a team approach
Our staff worked as a team with regular meetings and development workshops,
And we used a wiki to share resources,
and although one person would take overall responsibility for a unit the whole team collaborated on it
We also had the benefit of being able to wok collaboratively with staff at Swinburne Online who were experts in the online environment and were skilled learning designers (Sheena will talk a bit about this later)
Our whole environment was dynamic and collaborative and as such we were able to meet our targets and have units ready for delivery in November
We are now in a process of recruiting more permanent academic education staff
Although we are Having difficulty finding and appointing more senior education academics
Issues: Online, no reputation in the area of Education
Swinburne Online uses a model of online education that adheres to Professor Gilly Salmon’s five stage model of online learning combined with a supportive environment for learners (and Sheena is going to talk a bit about this later)
We take a Social Constructivist approach in the units – in other words we don’t just provide students with a whole lot of text to read through and expect them to know it
Students work through activities related closely to the learning materials scaffolding the assessments
Students are highly supported (again Sheena will talk more about this later)
And we try to make activities realistic – in other words tasks that they would likely perform in their future career
One major challenge has been overcoming people’s perception of online education as being sub-standard to the more traditional face-to-face courses.
the vast majority of people (even some seasoned educationalists) still take the view that it is essential to have ‘the expert’ up in front of the students to enable them to understand the materials being offered
Often these fears are somewhat mitigated when they realise the extent of the support that students are offered
rather than being left to their own devices.
Another challenge that has faced online pre-service teacher education courses is how to support students whilst on work-based experience (practicum).
it has been important to recognise the expertise of teacher mentors who work in schools
rather than sending out university-based tutors to support and assess students on placement.
I’m now going to hand over to Sheena who’s going to talk about our courses from the SOL perspective