Learning Technologies @ UniSQ
This learning technology resource shares tools and approaches used at UniSQ for the purpose of:
- broadening edtech use to support digital first learning
- providing further options to teachers within and beyond the learning management system as part of learning environment objectives
- supporting skill building and implementation skills
This resource is designed around the UniSQ Toolkit for online learning and teaching and it’s four elements: Tools, Pedagogy, Evaluation and Research.
In addition, examples and case studies feature learning in motion using a range of pedagogical approaches across disciplines.
Click on the links to explore each area:
Tools
Evaluation
Pedagogy
Research
Background
New learning paradigms have emerged through access to socially based technologies and networked facilitated online communities. Learning online is now more than an option – it is an essential way that learners at all levels connect, communicate, collaborate and create or co-construct new knowledge. Selection and implementation of educational technologies today goes beyond affordances of the Learning Management System (LMS). Student engagement in learning while online may depend on this selection. A more integrated, open and flexible approach using Web 2.0 tools in conjunction with a range of platforms ensures discipline bespoke pedagogical variety.
Educators must be able to choose from a basket of reliable edtech options for social, cognitive and teaching presence, as per the Community of Inquiry (CoI) theoretical framework (Garrison, 2017); for building a Community of Practice (CoP) (Wenger-Trayner, 2015); and for online student engagement cognitively, socially, behaviourally, emotionally, and collaboratively (Redmond et al., 2018). In addition, social constructivism involves social interaction and is the theoretical basis of collaboration (Laurillard, 2009) putting pedagogical emphasis on the role of collaboration (Harasim, 2012) for authentic communication, reflection and discourse (Garrison, 2015).
References
Garrison, D. (2015). Thinking collaboratively: Learning in a community of inquiry. Routledge.
Garrison, D. R. (2017). E-learning in the 21st century: A community of inquiry framework for research and practice. Taylor & Francis.
Harasim, L. (2017). Learning theory and online technologies (2nd ed.). Routledge.
Laurillard, D. (2009). The pedagogical challenges to collaborative technologies. International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, 4(1), 5-20. doi:10.1007/s11412-008-9056-2
Redmond, P., Abawi, L. A., Brown, A., Henderson, R., & Heffernan, A. (2018). An online engagement framework for higher education. Online learning, 22(1), 183-204. doi:10.24059/olj.v22i1.1175
Wenger-Trayner (2015). Introduction to communities of practice. https://wenger-trayner.com/introduction-to-communities-of-practice/
