DEANZ Conference, Wellington

DEANZ Conference
‘My Place, My Space, My Learning’
Wellington 18th-20th August 2008



At the recent ITPQ panel event for the collaborative Bachelor of Midwifery Programme it was recommended that one of our team attended the DEANZ (Distance Learning Association) of New Zealand in Wellington. I have to confess that I wasn’t even aware of the organisation at that point but was interested to note the title of the biennial event this, which immediately gave it some currency in terms of e-learning. More information about the organisation may be viewed at http://www.deanz.org.nz/

The conference was held at the wonderful Te Papa which was a fabulous venue and I was pleased to discover that Phillipa Seaton from CPIT was attending as I now had someone to attend the conference dinner with!

The programme suggested that the conference was going to be a useful mix of presentations around e-learning and pedagogical approaches to the whole raft of what ‘distance’ learning represents. That in itself is a very interesting concept and one that took up several sessions. Face-to-face does not necessarily equate with connection whereas a well designed discussion forum has the potential to create strong connection between students and facilitators. Gary Mersham delivered an interesting session called ‘Distance is dead, long live distance’ that explored this idea. This followed Mark Nicholls from the Laidlaw College, who has produced a typology of distance and blended educations in an attempt to define what it is when we talk about modes of delivery in education.

The conference kicked off with keynote speaker, Nancy White an e-learning consultant from Seattle who heads up a company called Full Circle Associates whose blog/business site can be viewed at http://www.fullcirc.com/weblog/onfacblog.htm

Nancy specialises in social networking and learning and was keen to stress that social learning is not new, but that it has been done ‘for ever’. The difference is that we now have tools like the world wide web at our disposal. She referred to the work of Etienne Wenger and the fact that communities of practice have become a reality because of changing boundaries.

Networked learning is about:-
• ME the individual
• WE the membership/group identity/ shared interest

Nancy talked at length about informal learning which takes place outside of the structure. She introduced a number of interesting selection of theorists such as Jay Cross http://internettime.com an advocate of free-range learning, George Siemens, well respected theorist who is going to facilitate the open source course on connectivism that a number of us have enrolled on http://www.ymlp11.com/pubarchive_show_message.php?connectivism_08+72 , and the work of Dave Cormier around ‘Rhizomatic Learning’ who uses the metaphor of the rhizome to demonstrate connectivism and constructivism in learning. http://davecormier.com/edblog/2008/06/03/rhizomatic-education-community-as-curriculum/ Nancy also introduced me to the concept of the ‘edupunk’ which is listed in Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edupunk as an approach to teaching and learning practices that result from a do it yourself (DIY) attitude….which describes inventive teaching and inventive learning.

The second keynote speaker Michael Barbour is Assistant Professor at the Wayne State University in Detroit. I have to admit that I was a bit ambiguous about attending this session as it was entitled ‘Today’s student and virtual schooling: the reality, the challenges, the promise’ and I did wonder what it would have to offer me. From a personal perspective, it confirmed everything that I believed about the products of Generation Y. They are no different to 14 year olds from any generation except they are far more prone to narcissism. He produced some really interesting studies around the notion that kids today whilst multi-tasking (on computer, messaging, listening to music, watching youtube etc) they can access, process, store and retrieve information effective. Actually, and I will use this against my 14 year old with relish, they can’t. Their retrieval of information would appear to be quite seriously impaired. I know that this theory has been critiqued, and perhaps it does give comfort to someone who is not a skilled multi-tasker. However, Michael raised many questions about the value of using e-learning for all teenagers and this was a really interesting talk. His portfolio can be viewed on http://www.michaelbarbour.com/


Leigh Blackall, known to us all, presented a session on the inverted IP policy currently being adopted by Otago Polytechnic. This is clearly an area of some significance for us in the throes of a collaboration and I was interested in what Leigh had to say. Leigh explained that Otago have adopted a Creative Commons Attribution copyright licence and has been using platforms such as Wikipedia to create Open Education Resources and Practices. Leigh explained the staff development programmes that had been introduced to support this development which includes sessions on:-
• Social networking
• Copyright
• Digital literacy
And additionally preparing the staff to produce,
• Weblogs
• Course wiki’s

What this session did for me was to bring home the huge responsibility that this inverted policy places on staff. I appreciate that they retain rights over their own materials but they also incur a considerable amount of responsibility. There is still the facility to restrict copyright access, but any restrictions will be made with what might be considered to be a reasonable time frame.
I raised the fact that the other watchword in ITP circles is ‘collaboration’ and asked what happened when the drive for collaboration collides with a very progressive IP policy. Leigh agreed that this could be a problem but was confident that there would be a way around it.

I attended a couple of sessions on supporting students in e-learning . Ben Kehrwald ask ed some significant points around what he considered to be the four main areas of support,
• Academic
• Administrative
• Affective
• Technical
He posed the following questions:-
Are students prepared?
• How do we define roles and responsibilities for learners?
• How do we manage learner expectations?
• How do we manage to support learning in blended delivery mode?
Are teachers prepared?
• How do we define roles and responsibilities for teachers?
• What does blended learning mean for face to face teaching?
• Are the staff able to collaborate?
• How do we motivate staff?
This was followed by a presentation by Glenda Oliver and Caroline Rawlings from the Open Polytechnic who talked about supporting studnets by using a telephone support service which aims to encourage and support students to actively engage with their learning and complete their courses successfully. It has been particularly useful with Maori students for three main reasons:-
1. Korero - opportunity for f2f conversation.
2. Whanau – positive relationship with polytech
3. Tatau tatau opportunity to belong to a community of learners.

Consists of
• dedicated team of supporters – not teachers just people who connect with learners
• designated hours for calling 4 nights a week
• age range of peer support callers 18-75
• Team given script to act as icebreaker.
• Call recorded to monitor progression of students

This scheme seems to be successful because it is a familiar form of technology for them low tech-high touch and Maori students like that. They also offer online workshops:-
Studywise . week long workshop. Study skills and strategies for academic success the week before each semester starts
Examwise tips and strategies for exam prep each semester a month prior to the exams.
These provide:-
• Just in time learning
• Accessible when and where they need it.
The highlight of the conference for me, has to be the workshop session presented by the CORE Education team. Derek Wenmouth, Jim Tittsler and Remo Williams introduced us to eXe an XHTML desktop authoring software package which can export content in a format that can be used in a variety of LMS systems. Effectively, eXe packages the content of courses and it can then be uploaded to any LMS system. Therefore, if an institution makes the decision to use another LMS, then the material is just moved which it currently can’t be. Also if someone leaves employment and wants to export the materials with them they can do so (providing they are using an inverted IP policy I guess!) . This offers huge advantages, and as someone who has been struggling with converting files to html to load on Moodle, I was very excited to see this initiative. The team have been to an event called ‘Test-Fest’ in the US and they beat many of the commercial companies producing this sort of software hands down. The package is open source and free and available at http://exelearning.org The package is compatible with Moodle by using SCORM and the materials could also be downloaded from eXe and loaded onto CD-roms or DVD’s to send out to students who do not have internet access. Further information about the system can be found on wikieducator at http://www.wikieducator.org/Online_manual/Working_with_eXe#Working_with_eXe
The Wednesday morning was commenced with a presentation by Claire Atkins from NMIT on the use of Second Life in Education. I have been interested in Second Life for some time but had considerable problems accessing the site. I have subsequently had reservations about the use of this tool and have in all honesty questioned whether it is a valuable tool for e-learning or an escape from reality. Or could it serve both purposes. Claire did little to reassure me when she confessed to spending at least 2000+ hours on Second Life since her introduction last year, having sacrificed (or not) television viewing.
She began her talk by giving a definition of 2nd Life as a 3d real time fully interactive online digital world, imagined created and owned by its residents .
She stressed that it was not really a game as it has no rules or specific purpose, although games could be created within it. She suggested that as an extremely rich virtual environment, it offered highly engaging roleplay opportunities, and an integrated eco-system that encouraged a high degree of collaborative action. Conferences could be held in real time that would allow people from all over the world to gather and one advantage of these virtual conferences was that individuals could break out and hold private discussion. Something that would be difficult to achieve in realty
She then introduced us to the NZ Educators Group and Koru a Second Life Island purchased by the group and being used for research purposes by the SLENZ group. It was purchased in July 2007 and rented some areas to other education providers. The purpose of the project is to build a NZ community of educators, students and researchers and to offer a meeting place for the Kiwi educators group. Classes are being taught there by NMIT and a second island is soon to be added.
Claire then took us on a virtual tour of Koru and I still feel a little uneasy about this as a modality. It is fun but it does smack of Lara Croft and the 1990’s animation graphics a little too much for my liking. However, I must concede that there is some amazing stuff to be seen there. A dance teacher has built Wellington Railway Station as a non-space for dance. He is currently working on having a dance company housed in the station that can be observed and they will be made to have an ethereal quality that will allow the avatars to walk through them. He has placed what look like plaques around the building and each contains the text from his blogs. All in all an amazing artistic venture and I loved the concept. Nancy White suddenly decided that she would try and get her avatar (Nancy Chocco) to interact online with Claire’s avatar Awevvana. Awevanna gave us an amazing demonstration of her dancing ability on the islands dance flood area (complete with revolving globe) but sadly Nancy did not have skills to participate so had to stand by and sadly watch. Nancy turned up on several occasions throughout the tour and gave everyone a good chuckle.

Bill Anderson presented a session on retention rates in distance and online education based on the datat from the Single Data Return Survey from December 2005. This survey relates to all formally assessed courses of more than a weeks equivalent, full time courses. The survey covers about 80% of all course enrolments at tertiary level, so is a reasonably good indicator.
He said that distance learning was notoriously associated with poor retention rates. He suggested that if we looked at attrition and retention rates overall then online distance elarning was not really much worse overall and in some cases was better than with conventiona classroom taught students.
He also illuminated that the higher on the education ladder that people climbed, the more likely statistically they were to stay. By undergraduate level, the odds were stacked in favour of the selcted student completing their course and post graduate data suggested that this was even higher.
He itemised that the three key issues in relation to retention were:-
1. Recruitment – getting the recruitment process robust
2. Retrieval – retrieving struggling students with extra support
3. Reclamation – getting students who had failed back on track with good support mechanisms.

The closing session was given by Marcus Akuhata-Brown an amazing Maori educator who has led a series of innovative education programmes addressing the learning needs of youth at risk and young offenders. He is the Director of Tukaha Global Consultancy. He was an amazing speaker and storyteller and it was an inspired and inspiring finale to what had been a really informative and incredibly useful conference. I think it is fortuitous that Gordon Sudderby made the recommendation about attending in the ITPQ feedback and I think that we should certainly consider joining the organisation as I think that they will be able to offer support and advice to us in the continuing development of the new curriculum.