Technology Demonstrators is a program designed to assist you with the use of new and existing technologies to support learning and teaching at USQ.  We have four key pillars:

• Tools – the digital technologies themselves
• Pedagogies – used to guide the use of these tools
• Evaluation – to measure impact
• Research – both to guide our actions and as an outcome of what we do.

At the heart of TechDems is its collaborative community of practice. Read more about TechDems here.

Want to become part of this community? Complete the EOI form.

S1 2021:

In semester 1 this year, we completed interventions with the 2020 cohort of TechDems. (An intervention is when someone like you identifies a need or an opportunity within a student facing platform, and then works with a Learning and Teaching Assistant to address this.

Interventions occurred across 11 courses, using 10 different tools, and impacting over 2000 students.

A highlight was an academic who sought to improve student community, as she’d only had 4 posts on forums in the previous semester. (Familiar?) Aligning Padlet with her course design, she moved to 319 posts, 403 written responses, and 1164 reactions.  Quite an increase!

S2 2021

This semester there was exponential growth in the TechDems program, largely because of the interests and enthusiasm of the community.

• Interventions are still ongoing.
• We have additionally started several Special Interest Groups:
  • The Microsoft Teams for Teaching SIG is well established and has been focused on piloting the platform within courses and learning and teaching platforms across the university.  We’re working closely with Microsoft and USQ ICT on this SIG, so that we can inform the potential future roll-out of the platform.  Find out more here.
  • Our Student Engagement SIG is currently grappling with the big questions: What is engagement? How is engagement measured? What is the difference between engagement, success, and achievement level? In the new year, we will start to explore the different digital technologies that enhance engagement.  Find out more here.
  • The ePortfolio SIG is in response to the wide use of ePortfolios across many schools, whose use focuses on: first year experience, employability, work integrated learning, and digital literacy.  Find out more here.

2022

Planning is underway:

• Our coaching program will be launched.
• A collaborative learning SIG will commence.
• Our website, full of inspiring advice and practical resources, will be launched.

Watch this space – more to come in 2022…

Katrina Cutcliffe