Report on SA AALL meeting 26 June 2008: 'Conversations around using IT tools with academic language and learning'

The event was hosted by Dr Salah Kutieleh and his team at the Student Learning Centre of Flinders University.
The purpose of the evening was to share ideas and experiences we’ve had with using IT tools with academic language and learning. A few people volunteered to get the ‘conversations’ started.
There were 17 ALL practitioners who attended and it was really good to meet several ‘new faces’ from the three universities. From Flinders Uni - Salah Kutieleh, Regina Sliuzas, Dominic Keuskamp, Helene Hipp, Bindi Macgill, Julia Miller, Janene Thompson, & Tahereh Pourshafie; from UniSA - Liz Horrocks, Bev Kokkinn, Helen Johnston, Susanna Carter, Monica Behrend; from Adelaide U - Kate Cadman, Richard Warner, Cally Guerin, and Lalitha Velautham.
The first presentation was by Bindi MacGill (Flinders U) who talked about Inclusive Learning Technologies produced by Spectronics. She is particularly interested in text-help tools to support NESB students like ‘Read and Write’. She is attending a workshop by Spectronics in July. If you’d like to continue the conversation with her, you can contact Bindi at Belinda.MacGill@flinders.edu.au. We hope to meet again soon to talk more about this type of text help tool.
Helen Johnston (UniSA) presented a few slides on using BLOGS. At the Mawson Lakes campus where she works the students are mainly studying Engineering & Computer Science etc and many of these students do not often attend workshops on campus. So Helen and Andrea Duff have set up a virtual community through blogs to reach more students. For example, they have a blog called “Writing in the Sciences” http://writinginthesciences07.blogspot.com/ which is well subscribed. They start the blog during orientation and this has been a really successful ploy in getting students to sign up. They add names of students who do attend face-to-face workshops to the blogs. The feedback from students has been very good. If you would like to know more about BLOGS at UniSA please contact Helen at Helen.johnston@unisa.edu.au or Andrea Duff at andrea.duff@unisa.edu.au.
Richard Warner (Adelaide U) discussed how he and Deb Coleman-George have been using WIMBA to provide comprehensive feedback on student writing that overcomes the ‘short-handed’ nature of much written feedback. The 3 minute wave files have proved to be really effective in reducing time spent explaining written comments in individual consultations and, unexpectedly, in students sharing their feedback with peers. If you want to ask Richard more about WIMBA his email address is Richard.warner@adelaide.edu.au.
Monica Behrend (UniSA) discussed the online assignment writing resources she developed in close collaboration with course lecturers for a transnational Computer Science course in Hong Kong. Prior to this intervention up to 40% of students failed the assignment writing component of the course. However, the provision of the online resources did not necessarily ensure that students used them. In a pilot study the resources were added to the online course homepage in a separate location not integrated into the assessment specifications, and students seemed to have not used the resources. After evaluating this situation, the resources were redesigned and seamlessly embedded within the assessment specifications. Students now used these resources albeit in a limited way, despite their convenient location and potential motivation by linking them directly to the marking criteria. Interestingly, students perceived the affordance of the resources as a result of the research interview timed after their marked Assignment 1 was returned. Consequently they used the resources more extensively for the second assignment. As a result of the intervention, students' assignments improved on average by one assessment grade and only 5% of students failed. The implications for language and learning advisers is to continue to make expectations explicit through use of examples and models embedded within courses by working directly with lecturers. These resources need to be discussed with students for them to perceive their potential. In the design of the resources for students with English as an additional language, the students recommended to keep them short, use dot points, use colour and some interactivity. One limitation was that not all transnational students necessarily have reliable internet access at home. For more conversation with Monica try her email monica.behrend@unisa.edu.au. Even tho she is on Professional Experience Program leave working on the PhD, I’m sure she’d love to hear from you.

Bev Kokkinn (UniSA) talked about using a social network technology called NING. She has worked very closely with the Course Coordinator of a large first year course at UniSA and an academic librarian. The Course Coordinator was keen to trial using NING as a social network technology to overcome some of the limitations of the unisanet tools. The site was called Public Relations 1: social networking for learning.
Why NING? Well, it has the following features:
• It is free
• It is a secure network – members are invited or can request membership
• It includes the following functions: Main page, My page for individual members, List of all members , Events, Forum, Gadgets, Groups, Notes, Pages, Photos and Videos. It also offers a blog.
• It has RSS feed and a ‘poke’ function (sic)
• Although the person who sets it up has most control, it allows members to set up their own separate groups and to limit membership to invitation only
• It has many other functions
See NING in Education: Using NING for Educational Social Networks http://education.ning.com/ And if you want to talk about NING with Bev then please contact her at bev.kokkinn@unisa.edu.au.
The evening ended with some discussion about “where to from here?”. We also thought it would be good to find ways to evaluate work we do using IT. There was agreement that we need more conversations about IT tools and that this kind of event was useful and it was also suggested that a ‘round table’ be included in the program for the SA AALL Tri-institutional Day in November.
Finally, thank you to the Flinders U team in the Student Learning Centre, in particular Salah Kutieleh, Regina Sliuzas and Dominic Keuskamp. The event was a really good start to our conversations about using IT tools in ALL.
Bev Kokkinn (SA Rep for AALL)
14 July 2008

(also available as printable attachment; see below)