Tag: NIDL

Digital Learning, Presentations, Research, Visiting Speakers

Teaching in Blended Learning Environments: Creating and Sustaining Communities of Inquiry

Earlier this month Professor Norm Vaughan gave a visiting scholar presentation on the topic of blended learning. Norm argued, citing the words of Gladwell (2000), that we have gone over the “tipping point”; blended learning has become an educational epidemic. The three societal forces that have converged (the perfect wave) to drive this epidemic are technology, financial constraints, and quality concerns. The blended approaches to learning that have arisen to address these forces have lead to three major non-contradictory affordances – effectiveness, efficiency, and convenience.

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Set against this backdrop, Professor Vaughan’s talk was designed to provide participants with an opportunity to share and discuss strategies for designing, facilitating, and leading blended learning courses and programmes. 60133658.jpg

More specifically, the session offered participants with the opportunity to share and discuss strategies for: (i) designing and organizing a blended course, (ii) facilitating and moderating a blended course, and (iii) directing and leading a blended course. It is fair to say that Norm explored all three of these themes with considerable passion and the audience was highly engaged in ideas around creating and sustaining communities of inquiry.

Professor Vaughan is Co-founder of the Blended Online Design Network (BOLD), a member of the Community of Inquiry Research Group, the Associate Editor of the International Journal of Mobile and Blended Learning and he is on the Editorial Boards of the International Journal of Excellence in e-Learning, Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology, the International Journal of E-Learning & Distance Education,  the Journal on Centres for Teaching & Learning, the Learning Communities Journal. and the Journal of Information Fluency.

Conferences, Development, Research

Y1Feedback and Assessment Conference

This brief post alerts readers to the Y1Feedback Project and provides some personal reflections on last week’s International Assessment in Higher Education Conference.

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The Y1Feedback Project is a collaborative effort between Maynooth University (Project lead), Athlone Institute of Technology, Dublin City University and Dundalk Institute of Technology. The project is being led by Lisa O’Regan with the support of a strong  research and development team. In brief the Y1Feedback Project seeks to improve and develop feedback dialogue in first year undergraduate programmes to support student transition by using digital technologies. So far the team is in the process of reviewing relevant literature and completing the analysis of a baseline staff and student survey of feedback practices in our respective institutions. We have already shared some of the preliminary findings of this survey at national and international conferences. To our surprise last week we won the “Best Poster” award at the International Assessment in Higher Education Conference. Our Y1Feedback website contains more information about this National Forum funded project and please do not hesitate to contact a member of the team should you wish to learn more about the project.

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Reflections on the Assessment Conference – Elaine Walsh

Last week several members of the Y1Feedback team attended the International Assessment in Higher Education Conference in Birmingham. The following reflections on the conference come from Elaine Walsh who represents DCU and the NIDL on the Y1Feedback Project.

“I kicked-off the Assessment Conference in Birmingham by attending a master class by Tansy Jessop (University of Winchester) on Transforming the Experience of Students through Assessment (TESTA). What a fantastic start to the conference.

The parallel sessions were full of so many great talks that I found it hard to choose between them. However, I wasn’t disappointed by any of the sessions I managed to attend. It was great to have issues around assessment being discussed by such knowledgeable people.

The opening keynote by Dr Maddalena Taras definitely got me thinking. The key aspect of this presentation, that I took away, was the importance of questioning. Also, we (as academics) should be mindful that our judgement on a person’s work can have a real effect on their lives. Therefore, we must be able to justify our judgement. We must make our implicit thinking explicit!

My take on the closing keynote by Professor Jo-Anne Baird was the increasing focus on assessment in teaching and learning and the need for transparency without creating dependency.

The competition was on as the battle of the posters commenced. There were 43 posters in the competition and we each had three minutes to get our message across. While my work on designing an assessment strategy and supporting assessment writers (Assessment Strategy: Online Distance Education) did not win!!! I was thrilled to be part of the winning poster.  The Y1Feedback Project is proving to be an excellent collaboration between Maynooth University (Lisa O’Regan), Athlone Institute of Technology (Naula Harding and Geraldine McDermott), Dublin City University (Mark Brown and Elaine Walsh) and Dundalk Institute of Technology (Moira Maguire and Gerry Gallagher).

It wasn’t all about assessment though as we had an hour to check out some of the local sights in Birmingham. We had a drink while looking out over the canal and toasted to our win. What a thoroughly enjoyable and exciting conference. Looking forward to 2017!”