Game on for Learning

Panorama of AppV Games on CleVR.com

Today 60 students were playing networked games as part of the Enrichment Program on the Elizabeth Campus thanks to dedicated problem solvers in ICT Services. Simon and Rob (pictured far left and centre - they were moving fast...) used MS Application Virtualisation (App-V) to deploy 60 instances of legal games across normal student networked computers.

The beauty of this is that the games don't affect the other software running on the network or network performance. While playing the games students have no access to the internet and play time can be controlled centrally.

The test run today proved it worked brilliantly! Game-based learning environments have been used on various campuses before for

• developing literacy, numeracy and communication skills
• digital story telling
• machinima (movies made 'in-world')
• modding (building games using commercial game engines)
• character design, AI and scripting
• 3D design and terraforming
• problem solving and system thinking skills

Today's session was just about fun and the doors had to be closed after the first 60 students arrived leaving many disappointed!

Simon and Rob's work will mean that ICT Shared Services can provide similar engaging learning environments across all campuses into the future.

Enabling a Learning Commons

Click graphic for full size

Polytechnic Libraries and Learning Centres have been evolving for many years and now bear little resemblance to the traditional libraries that many might remember from twenty years ago.
This evolution is continuing as we plan to meet the needs of tomorrow's learners, teachers and other clients. The Polytechnic Corporate Plan (2009-2010) outlines a 'learning commons' philosophy that further integrates learning and support services for students and facilitates the flexible-applied-connected-supported learning agenda.

In addition the State Library and UTas Library are changing to meet client needs. The national Re-Imagining Libraries Strategic Plan is indicative of the directions many libraries are taking:

"In collaboration, the National, State and Territory Libraries of Australia and New Zealand will become leaders in empowering people to create, discover, use and transform our collections, content and global information resources."

These directions require more open and connected ICT services than has previously. The Polytechnic Library Online Services Project team has been mapping the ICT functionality needed to meet the above agenda.

The above graphic (click for full size) maps the ICT functionality to enable:

• Information and resources to come into the organisation including Open Education Resources, Open Courseware, RSS feeds... (LHS of graphic)
• Information and resources produced or added to by students and staff within the organisation including Open Education Resources, Open Courseware and RSS feeds to be shared with others (RHS of graphic)
• Online access by students and staff within the Polytechnic via normal logon (LDAP) or Open ID (bottom of graphic)
• External access by school students, mentors, local communities... via open unauthenticated access or Open ID (top of graphic)

These needs will now determine the kinds of systems that will be required. Current ICT systems may or may not be sufficient.

E-Portfolios for students and staff

E-Portfolios are now ready for anyone in the Polytechnic who wants to use them - staff, classes, groups, individual students... As described before we are using Mahara to provide this service. We have two hosted services arising from different pilot projects in 2009 - one is just Mahara and the other is an integrated Mahara + Moodle installation.

Teacher and user guides (video and text) are available and a community of practice has been established across all campuses. It will be interesting to see how many staff and students decide to use E-Portfolios who were not part of previous projects.

Problems encountered during the 2009 projects will hopefully be addressed with recent changes such as

• upgrading Internet Explorer 6 to Internet Explorer 8
  
• upgrading Mahara to allow for importing and exporting
  
• customised help

Mahara isn't the only solution for E-Portfolios. Some staff and students choose to use

• blogs with embedded code from other sites where they save work or links to online file storage
• wikis or services such as Google docs and sites
• Deviant Art or similar shared galleries
• Flickr, Picassa or similar photo albums
• Facebook or MySpace for student or whole class folios or online presence with rich media
  

A survey of staff at the end of 2009 revealed that 40% were exploring so-called web 2.0 or social media sites for use with students. The attraction of Mahara is that it provides some social media functionality within a local learning environment while still providing student control of access to work including external access via a 'secret' URL.

Students can connect with and share work with classmates or friends as well as teachers and feedback from students in the 2009 projects indicated that this was highly valued.

Re-framing the Present

The current restructuring of Tasmanian public post year 10 education provides a good opportunity to re-conceptualise ICT services to match learning needs. A new ICT network infrastructure has been built from the ground up that supports both legacy and new systems across 16 campuses statewide.

Learning priorities have already been re-framed as the FACS Learning Model - Flexible, Applied, Connected and Supported Learning. In what ways can we re-conceptualise ICT services to enable, facilitate and support the FACS Learning Model?

We have already attempted to map a student perspective on current and planned ICT services, and to map the notion of a Virtual Campus. This post attempts yet another map - starting with learning. The learning priorities on the left are linked to the necessary ICT functionality to support them on the right:

Does it show the important ICT functionality required to enable, facilitate and support FACS Learning?

The next part of this mapping exercise emphasises the need for management processes and tools for the learner, the teacher and the institution .

'Manage MyLearning' is about each learner's need to manage all the processes, artifacts, resources, networks... as they continue their learning journey - particularly as the learner becomes more self-directed.

The teacher needs to manage their teaching processes, resources, classes, students, professional networks... Recently some have done this in a Learning Management System (LMS) - which has really been more of Teaching Management System for most.

'Manage MyInstitution' could be seen as the institutions need to manage facilities, services, staff and students... (Or it might be taking the 'My' trend too far...)

Are there other key roles that should be included here that will inform the provision of ICT services?

The next map shows some of the ICT services that might support learners, teachers and the institution. A brief description of each follows...

Folio & Pathway Management Systems: This is about much more than the provision of efolios. It is about each learner managing their own learning choices, resources, artifacts, networks... on their learning journey (pathway). The learner has control over who can view, access and share their learning resources and artifacts.

Learning Management Systems: This is the standard LMS functionality which is mostly about teacher structures and controls to support learning, teaching and assessment.

Information Management Systems: This is largely about managing and communicating institutional information and resources. Systems such as MOSS have evolved to integrate greater functionality however this requires authenticated access to a closed system.

Learning Environments: These include spaces and structures such as virtual worlds, simulations, serious games, augmented reality... Some of these can integrate resources and functionality from other management systems - eg Sloodle.

Virtual Learning Commons: This is the online component of the 'Learning Commons' that includes additional services to learning resource access such as learning support, client services and exhibition spaces.

Shared Services Management Systems: Finance, Facilities, Human Resources and much more.

Learning and Business Applications & Web Services: Office, specialist and learning tool software and web services. Includes application deployment.

Research & Project Management Systems: This has been somewhat ad-hoc in the past and could evolve to support collaborative innovation and research within and beyond the institution.

Course Management Systems: This could evolve beyond the management of in-house courses to the provision of access to Open Courseware.

What other key ICT services are required to support FACS learning?

Still missing from this mapping exercise are the range of services - including some of the management services above - that exist beyond the institution.

The full map can be seen here.

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eFolios for Learning and Life

This year we are "establishing and implementing a Polytechnic ePortfolio strategy" across all campuses. A significant part of this work will be informed by a 2009 E-Learning Innovations Project 'E-portfolios are 'living' evidence' supported by the Australian Flexible learning Framework.

This project focuses on using efolios (Mahara) as an integral part of the learning process - a process described in the 2008 JISC report as 'e-portfolio-based learning'. Last week saw the first orientation session into Mahara for the group involved in this project.

Graeme and I presented some background information on folios and learning processes and we spent some time playing with Mahara - uploading artifacts, setting profiles, linking with 'friends' and creating views.

Unfortunately the laptop links through a hub failed only worked for a couple of people so we had to resort to external broadband wireless connections through mobiles phones and pre-paid USB modems. Fortunately we were able to get a surprising number working.

I've decided I love my ultra-notebook and pre-paid broadband. No more worries about being able to connect at different locations and no more firewall hassles - I use Telstra services... I can load all my own applications - and they work as expected.

At 1kg the ultra is great to carry around - my laptop is 3.5kg and more when it's in its bag.

I've notice a few other staff going down this path as well - and some students. But I digress...

Here are some of the slides we presented during the day:

Uploaded on authorSTREAM by regor2012

The efolio project is part of a bigger picture of the range of ICT services used by learners - how and where and when they access them - and who provides them. The 'bigger picture' for the new Tasmanian Polytechnic is about flexible, connected, applied and supported learning which can be enabled and/or enriched through

• efolios
• portals
• LMSs
• virtual worlds
• augmented reality
• serious games
• communication and collaboration environments
• media channels
• galleries
• open courses
• learning commons
  

More on these later...


Last Thursday I attended an RMIT 'roundtable' on efolios and RPL. It was very useful - partly because we heard that we have been doing what everyone else is doing and partly because I made links with several institutions that are using Mahara. I also got to meet Alison Miller after following her for a couple of years on Twitter and journals. She provides a great channel to what is going on in the efolio world - and other things.

Towards the end we started to talk about the broader use of efolios for learning and life. This is definitely a conversation to continue in the near future.

Measuring Flexible Learning - Breadth and Depth

We are thinking about how to establish benchmarks and measure progress in flexible learning across the Tas Polytechnic - 16 campuses and 1500 teaching staff. But before we can decide on some key performance indicators we need a common and agreed definition of flexible learning.

Flexible learning is often defined as providing learners with choices about where, when, how - and sometimes what - learning occurs. The goal is personalised learning that meets the needs of each and every student - both on and off campus.

The degree of flexible learning that an educational organisation can provide will depend on a range of factors including:

• learning, teaching and assessment principles and practice
• facilities and support structures
• course and learning designs
• learner engagement and responsibility
• accountability and quality assurance
  

Strategies which have been used to increase the level of flexibility in learning include:

• eLearning and Flexible Delivery
• Flexible/Open Learning Options
• Curriculum/Training Package Frameworks
• Learning Environment/Space Design
• Professional Learning, Sharing and Collaboration
• Facilities and Infrastructure for Access and Equity
  

One objective of the Tasmanian Polytechnic is to "establish flexible learning as part of every teacher's repertoire" - broadening the availability of flexible learning options beyond 'champions', early adopters and specialist areas and deepening the degree of flexible learning beyond the provision of simple content and delivery alternatives.

Flexible learning is not new to the organisation. Many - if not most - teachers already provide some form of choice for learners and there are numerous examples of individuals, teams and learning areas that provide very effective and innovative options for personalised learning, learning spaces and learner support. We need to learn from these and 'mainstream' them.

There are many examples of flexible 'elearning' including some that not only offer content, delivery and communication choices but go deeper to collaboration, reflective assessment and blended learning.

The Australian Flexible Learning Framework suggests a range of elearning indicators that we could adapt for measuring flexible learning. A number of these could use data that is already being collected to establish some early benchmarking.

Does anyone know of any other measures or KPI lists for flexible learning in that go beyond superficial adoption of ICTs?
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Collaboration in Learning and Teaching

Listening to a recent Stephen Downes presentation and reading a recent education.au report has progressed my thinking around collaboration, personal learning networks, virtual learning commons and efolios - and led me to try something new.

The 2009 Collaboration in Teaching & Learning education.au report is a great read for several reasons. It's well researched, broadly informed and comes at a time when some clear directions - or at least some clear choices - are emerging and is therefore a very timely and useful document.

I also appreciated the format of this Australian Government publication with Creative Commons copyright, references bookmarked at delicious.com and illustrative videos highlighted in the text.

The report's discussion of the options we have for ICT enabled collaboration also informed my thinking in a range of areas including those I listed above.

Stephen's April 16 presentation Providing Learning in Social Networks describes a journey to eLearning 2.0 that I found very familiar having used some of the tools and approaches he mentions including games and simulations, Moodle, Elgg and a range of Web 2.0 services.

Closed learning management systems, closed social networking learning environments and open web 2.0 services all have their pros and cons. How do we include the best of these and transcend - or at least alleviate - the disadvantages of each?

The part of the presentation that I found particularly interesting was the notion of a "distributed online course" and the idea that each student's personal learning spaces and network could be aggregated and re-mixed as a kind of RSS 'class stream'.

Stephen mentioned using Yahoo Pipes to bring each student's course work together and then re-publish them as an RSS feed. I teach a class at the moment (Student-Directed Inquiry - SDI) that uses Moodle as the central focus for information and tasks. Students are using Twitter as an 'activity log', blogs for their journal and various other web 2.0 services chosen by the students such as Flickr, Wikis and online galleries.

Yahoo Pipes enabled me to aggregate the RSS feeds from these various sources and apply some filters to sort the output in date order and remove any items that were published before the course commenced (a number of students have been using their online spaces and networks for some time).

I was then able to publish the 'class stream' Yahoo Pipe on my own class blog as a widget. I also put a link in the class moodle so that each student can not only view the work being published by every student but can also easily subscribe to the class stream in the aggregator of their choice or display it on their own blogs/journals or class websites. Each item retains a clickable link to the source for reading and comment.

In the picture above I have placed the class stream in a Mahara portfolio 'view' - I'm currently playing with Mahara as an option for student efolio publishing. This 'view' has my personal class journal on the right hand side and the class stream on the left. My next task is to create another pipe that will aggregate all the comments that students make on each others journals and other places.

Towards the end of the presentation Stephen suggests that the re-mixed and published class RSS feed might have other timed content automatically injected into it. This sounds like a fantastic idea - although it might be beyond Yahoo Pipes... Hmm... actually perhaps I just need an RSS source with items that are dated for publishing in the future... a little clumsy perhaps but it might work until I find something better - or Stephen and others make one :-)

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