The journey project

I spoke in the 6th and final presentation slot and I spoke about the Facebook trial I am running for incoming UWA students.  I covered issues of logistics, content management, evaluation, community building and promotion.

The 5th speaker was Julie Millias who co-ordinates the UWA Enquiry Management System (called iPoint).  (julie spoke specifically about some of the features being explored as part of the Sales and Marketing module.

The 4th speaker (after morning tea) was Mike Williams who has been co-ordinating the UWA Alumni social networking project (now called alumniConnect).  His presentation included a live demonstration of the online community (not included in these slides).

The 3rd speaker was Amy Hightower from the UWA Library who presented her experiences of running the ‘23 Things’ pilot with Library staff.

The 2nd speaker was Chris Thorne who is conducting research in the SChool of PHysics and who spoke about various aspects of his work on the Virtual Universe Project.

The 1st speaker was Grant Malcolm, Manager of the UWA WebOffice.  He spoke about syndication options that can be applied using tools hosted by UWA and other exrternal services.

An idea I had a few months ago came to fruition yesterday with the first UWA Emerging Technologies Forum going off with a bang.  Our speakers were from the

• WebOffice
• Virtual Universe Project
• Library
• alumniConnect project
• iPoint
• Online Student Journey Project

More than 75 people attended from across the university and there were lots of opportunities for questions and networking. 

The next few blog posts include the slides form each speaker.  Accompanying audio will be available sometime on the weekend.  The forum booklet will soon be downloadable and editable from the Online Student Journey project wiki

Dr Lisa Cluett. Senior Project Officer for the Online Student Journey Project at UWA presented a session entitled ‘Engaging students using animated characters: a simple and cost effective way of hosting student experiences online’ on Friday 24th April (1100–1135) at the ATEM Student Services Centre Conference, Fremantle, WA

Slides now available here – hosted by Slideshare (a free file sharing tool) and in *.pdf format Cluett_vokis_atem-sscc-09_20090424

ABSTRACT – Student engagement remains a topic high on the agenda for Student Services’ staff and the role of professional staff in the student experience is increasingly recognised.  Finding new ways to engage students with our services, programs and resources can be a challenge.  This paper presents an initiative from UWA Student Services that engages students with their institution (and with each other) by using animated characters.  Issues of anonymity, access, and pedagogy will be explored and the steps in creating an online character (using Voki and SitePal tools in this case) will be demonstrated.

Also presented during this timeslot:
o    Enquiry Management – warts ‘n’ all by Peter Cottam and Dipesh Shah from ECU
o    Driving innovation in higher education through Professional Enquiry: setting the case for Professional Enquiry as Continuing Professional Development (CPD) by Dr Oscar Odena from the School of Education, Queen’s University Belfast

Professor Bill Louden, Senior Deputy Vice Chancellor at UWA presented a keynote paper entitled ‘Social inclusion – student equity and diversity’ on Friday 24^th April (0905–0950) at the ATEM Student Services Centre Conference, Fremantle, WA

Excuse any errors, I am liveblogging.  Photos will be added later

First thing on Day 2 and it was time for the keynote from Prof. Bill Louden.  We kicked off just about on time despite many people queuing up for glasses of water!

Bill started right out of the gate saying that the numbers ‘20’ and ‘40’ were going to be key in the coming years and that his talk would be structured around issues of government targets, specifically the goal of having 20% of the 2020 cohort from low SES groups, rising to 25% by 2025.

When examining the current situation we can see that entry levels students from outside the affluent suburbs of Perth is significantly lower than those from the ‘western suburbs’ whose rate of entry is much higher.  There is better news when it comes to retention of students from low SES groups with background making little/no difference.

So where does the inequality stem from?  Bill asserts that university selection procedures are overshadowed in importance by factors that play out much earlier in students’ lives – in primary and secondary school and that it is here, rather than in University admissions policies that real change can be achieved.  There appears to be much we can learn from other countries (such as Finland, Canada) who seem to be doing better with students across all groups.  Risk of inequality in Australia is strongly skewed towards students who are indigenous or remote, or low SES with up to 4x as much risk as non-indigenous metropolitan and high SES.  How can we make the path easier for students who start their educational journey from a tougher place and experience ‘accumulating disadvantage’ during their school lives?  The problem was given clarity when Bill demonstrated the fundamental change between the patterns when kids are 6 years old (minimal impact of SES group) and when they are 17 where advantage has become concentrated and disadvantages have not been overcome.

The answer lies in a number of factors including funding for preschool education (we currently lie at the bottom of a list of 16 comparable countries, below Norway at the top and Mexico, UK and Korea further down).  Bill’s suggestion is to spend early and spend it in the right places, rather than waiting to spend millions of dollars on remedial programs much later in students’ lives.  The education revolution will see expenditure on standards of education, conditions of employment and entry for teachers and capital works for schools.

Measurement of social class also needs improving by moving away from the current ‘area-based’ system that uses postcode which fails simply because it fails to take into account variation within suburbs.  Governments can and should also set realistic, in-context targets that aren’t based solely on numbers, they shold (but probably wont’) increase income support payments and make scholarships exempt from counting as income.

Universities are doing their bit – intervening early, having embedded, comprehensive transition support programs and broadening access and entry schemes.

Question time was kicked of by Fred Chaney (yesterday’s keynote) who asked Bill how he thinks these thoughts might best be communicated to the Federal Government.  Bill felt that he had no trouble communicating his ideas and even that the goals he described were actually aligned with the governments – yet the money for investment was being directed elsewhere.  So are we serious or not? Are we happy as a country to sit in the middle of the table?

Dave Macey raised the issue of getting students into teacher training and how this can be progressed.  Bill likened the problem to those facing a doctors shortage (‘seat-filling’ problems) which cannot be faced by lowering entry standards.  Dave then asked what can be done for teachers already practicing to which Bill answered by highlighting the opportunity.

A final question from the Kerry Robinson at the front of the room asked How can we get the government to change its mind about counting scholarships as income?  Talk about it – more and more, wherever we can!

Bill’s talk will be available online shortly via this blog post.

BIO – Professor Bill Louden took up his role as Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor at The University of Western Australia at the beginning of 2009. He is a teacher, academic and curriculum expert. He is chair of the Curriculum Council of Western Australia and previously Dean of Education at UWA.  Professor Louden holds a PhD from the University of Toronto, and Arts and Education degrees from The University of Western Australia and Murdoch University.  Before joining UWA he served in Pro Vice-Chancellor and executive dean roles at Edith Cowan University. His research interests include literacy, standards and educational change.

Dr Lisa Cluett. Senior Project Officer for the Online Student Journey Project at UWA presented a session entitled ‘Training professional staff in Web 2.0 – a program developed by UWA Student Services via the ‘Online Student Journey’ project’ on Thursday 23rd April 09 (11.45-12.25) at the ATEM Student Services Centre Conference, Fremantle, WA

I think the session went really well – it’s resulted in an invite to Brisbane to talk to staff at the Southbank Institute of Technology anyway (thanks Graeme)!  An audience poll at the start of the talk showed a variety of knowledge levels about web 2.0 but I was really only interested in that to know what terms I could use without explaining them – because this talk was about a training program which is of course, about PEOPLE.  Slides available here via Slideshare and now in *.pdf format Cluett_osj_atem-sscc-09_20090423

BIO – Lisa has a number of roles at UWA including developing interactive online tools for Student Services and coordinating the staff Web 2.0 community.  She writes about the role of professional staff in online student engagement and is also the liveblogger for this conference

ABSTRACT – UWA Student Services offers programs, resources, advice and support to students during their entire journey – from prospective student to graduation.  In 2008 a project commenced to initiate and integrate a layer of interactive web tools to the Student Services programs.  This recognition of the importance of our web services and the ways that students engage with materials online has led to the development of a range of tools from blogs to online video, from wikis to online photo albums.  A pivotal part of this project, however, has been the significant staff training component.  This paper will outline the strategy used by UWA Student Services to gauge staff skill levels, raise awareness, stimulate interest and conduct training in Web 2.0 tools.

Also presented during this timeslot:
o    Expanding tertiary access for TAFE students by the collaborative development of dual learning pathways which guarantee entry and credit by Mary Hassard, Manager, Credit Transfer and Articulations, Griffith University
o    Not Just a Number by Carmel Langdon, Stephen Baker and Sonia Ryall Managers of Student Central, ECU