EduTECH 2019

Here’s the replay from my EduTECH talk + slides (PDF) which have links to the key research papers. The audience was primarily school teachers and ed-tech people, plus some higher ed.

In the talk, I introduce some of the work at the UTS Connected Intelligence Centre, where the team has been refining (for the last 3 years) automated, personalised feedback to students on higher order transferable competencies (Graduate Attributes in university-speak, or General Capabilities in the schools sector) — namely, high performance face-to-face teamwork (exemplar: nursing simulation exercises), and critical, reflective thinking (as revealed in students’ writing).

Getting the technology’s capabilities and the user experience right is impossible without meaningful engagement with educators and students. So this talk is organised around our emerging understanding of how to align the different elements of the whole sociotechnical infrastructure. To use the language of the framework – the ‘cogs’ can be tuned to different contexts, and must synchronise and drive in the same direction to create a coherent learning experience.

Particular acknowledgements for the work presented in this talk are due to the folks — lots more detail on their websites:

  • Shibani Antonette whose PhD has developed the Contextual Learning Analytics Design framework that is used to organise the talk, as well as working closely with the UTS Faculties of Law, and Business, establishing the Civil Law and Accounting versions of the automated writing feedback tool, and the impact evidence reported (with my co-supervisor Simon Knight);
  • Vanessa Echeverria whose PhD has developed the Nursing teamwork analytics with the UTS Faculty of Health (with co-supervisor Roberto Martinez-Maldonado);
  • Carlos Prieto Alvarez whose PhD has developed co-design techniques to give educators and teachers a voice in shaping these tools;
  • Cherie Lucas who pioneered automated feedback on reflective writing in the context of leading student work placements in the UTS Masters of Pharmacy program (learn more).

I didn’t have time to unpack other examples, but if this is area is of interest then you may want to check out this special issue and talk on Learning Analytics for 21st Century Competencies, and the two other tools I briefly mention at the end of the talk — ReView (article) and Learning Journeys using CLARA — which are already seeing impressive usage in schools. These are led respectively by UTS Professors Darrall Thompson and Ruth Crick.

This was picked up by Education Review, who interviewed me:

Leave a Reply

You can use these XHTML tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>