New Horizons

Personalised feedback is important to students and so is the speed of this feedback. Peter Taylor The Learning Innovator lecturer mentioned that students surveyed felt the most valuable feedback was "pushing" by their peers in discussion forums. A well designed conversational process was also highly valued.

QUT Student Services sent a fortnightly email to students asking if they could help students re the library. The students felt there was no sense of community because of the use of mass email.

Students are looking for a personal response. It takes a lot of time for personalised feedback.

Each time a student is weak on a point the teacher could go to the student and give the extra touch - use technology here! I would set up a group in Blackboard for each student and each group would have just me and one student in it. I had this in the MOOM course and it worked really well for personalised feedback.

Our fourth & final presenter on 24 April for The Learning Innovator was Cathie Doherty from QUT.

Cathie drew on the work of B. Bernstein (warning! horrific to read) , Franz Christie and Joe Muller. Christie and Muller built on Bernstein's work.

Trouble No. 1

Innovation creates the need to re-socialise.

In education we have rich processes of socialisation i.e. natural routines and certain conventions. For example if a teacher produced butcher's paper, students would all "know" they were going to do some group work! Routines = socialisation. If these are undone we need more time to do things a different way. e.g. When decimal currency was introduced in 1966 we all converted from the old currency to see how much something really cost. Three years on in 1969 we were all resocialised and didn't need to do these sums.

Trouble No. 2

The chain of re-contextualisation (distortion - Chinese whisper)

Knowledge is produced then recontextualised. There is a loss in translation. The more agents the re-contextualisation passes through the more dilution of the original knowledge.

Shane Dawson was our third presenter on 24 April.

1. We are all online learners now.
2. Prensky's digital natives or digital immigrants.
3. www.Sticky.net.au - a QUT website for digital creativity.
4. Univ of Ontario in Canada is the first university to include a laptop for each student in their enrolment fees. Observations of how those students use the laptops has shown they all multi-task while they are in lectures.
5. Focus on the learning - only see tools you actually need!
6. Shane drew an interesting diagram with "Technology" on the Y axis and "Time" on the X axis. He then drew lines representing staff, students and vendors. Result - There is a digital void. Students and technology vendors learn all about the technology in a quick timespan. Staff don't have the time to work up the technology axis which results in a digital void. The students are up there with the technology vendors. I personally think that is too broad a result - it depends on so many variables!!!!
   
7. As leaders/change brokers what processes are we going to implement?
8. Keeping up with our neighbours!!

I didn't get much out of Shane's presentation. If I could get a handout it might be useful!

Our second presentation on 24 April was from Lisa (can't remember her surname).

Limerick's textbook "Changing Agendas" - leadership in the post corporate era.

• Collaboration - shared/distributed leadership because one person doesn't have all the skills. I thought about the portfolio approach I take with the Library Managers - now I understand why it works so well!!! Also relevant to "partnering" mentioned in the White Paper.

• Individualism - Levinson refers to the "new age of self reliance" that hasn't been in the workplace for 40+ YEARS. Proactive autonomous workers who gain personal satisfaction but collaborate as individuals.

• Innovation - Andy Hargraves says "Innovation is learning to do things differently in order to do them better." Innovation needs to be purposeful with follow through. One doesn't have to be a pioneer - one can borrow ideas from elsewhere. Innovation doesn't need to be global.

• Human Centred Leadership - "Without people organisations don't exist." Trust is vital. It can't be contrived collegiality. Ethical principles - centrality of relationships. I thought about the "Seven Heavenly Virtues of Leaders" book and think it could be useful to bring home.

Implications for Leaders

1. Need for new mindsets (learn to learn).
2. Manage meaning (create and convey compelling images)
3. New competencies (networking, strategic alliances, sharing leadership - have to be BIG enough to say "I don't have all the answers".
4. Encourage and celebrate achievement.
5. Ethical practices
6. Self evaluation and reflection
7. Be open to possibilities
8. Welcome change

During discussions after the presentation, Lisa mentioned the Chief Scientist from CSIRO. We need to encourage more organisations to come up and reward those who try and subsequently fail.

Peter talked about three spaces for innovation:

1. Mainstream (standard)
2. Middle (experimental) - procedures are feral but community can come in & try and then migrate them into the mainstream. All resources are here - "we'll watch what you're doing and if it works try and implement in mainstream".
3. Feral (avoid)

Peter also feels discontinuous change (i.e. change of leadership) is a HUGE ISSUE e.g. Chris Robinson and the White Paper - what happens re continuity of the work being done if Chris leaves the role. If someone is acting in his position they won't make decisions!!!!

Our second lecture for The Learning Innovator was held on Monday 24 April. Four of Peter Taylor's colleagues gave presentations. Here are notes from the first presentation from Kar-Tin Lee.

Changing Pedagogical Practices: How far down the track are we and how can technology help?

1. If everyone in your organisation likes you, you are not fostering enough change.
2. If you never fail, you are not taking enough risks.
   
3. Leaders redefine people's paradigms about what is possible.
4. It's all about process rather than the tools!
5. How do we help Y gen create knowledge?
6. How do students learn today?
7. A teacher's learning environment is about communicating and collaborating, finding out how to assemble digital resources into structured sequences. It's about IP and digital objects. It's learning how to tap into technology for assessment.
8. Everyone has different definitions for "What is e-learning?". When I asked this question of a student focus group at Southbank Institute, they all thought it meant having to go to the Internet to access and print out their course notes!!!
9. Kar-Tin gave four key points about technology and learners. My favourite is to provide personalised feedback.
10. Informal learning Hole in the Wall (Sugata Mitra, NIIT, India) (Rennie & Mason, 2004 pp.118-121).
11. How do we think?

When questioned after the presentation, Kar-Tin suggested it was good practice to survey students to find out their learning styles. However after a few years she has come to understand the blend. A suggestion was to get students to undertake an online learning styles survey in week 1. This will not only help guage their learning styles but give them the opportunity to engage online.