[LINK] Fwd: VIP-L: Missed lectures accessible on screen

[Tom Worthington]

At 09:17 AM 31/07/2007, Jan Whitaker wrote:
>This should be of interest to a few linkers:
>
>>Missed lectures accessible on screen By Milanda Rout Australian IT 
>>- Australia, July 17, 2007
>>
>>STUDENTS will be able to listen to lectures and quiz academics at home ...

Not exactly a new idea. I tried out the Lectopia/iLecture System 
developed by the University of Western Australia at their Albany 
campus in 2000 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2006/05/podcasting-system-australian-made.html>. 
This system allows for recording digital audio and video of lectures.

ANU lectures have been recorded with a digital audio system for 
several years. When I push the "stop" button on the podium in the 
lecture theatre, the digital audio is made available to the students 
via the web based course management system. The system now has an 
option for providing podcasts 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/technology/it/podcastingpolicy.shtml>.

The notes and slides are also provided online for some lectures, 
along with assignments and tutorials. There are forums for students 
to discuss and ask questions. In most cases the questions are 
answered by other students in the forum, not the staff. Some courses 
incorporate the forums into the assessment process, grading students 
on their participation. I expect this is much the same at many 
Australian universities and is not something they would think worth 
doing a media release about. The suggestion that staff at home would 
spend their time answering student questions shows the article is not 
about a real system.

The ANU software engineering students have a more advanced system 
with software development tools and scheduling tools integrated 
(developed by a team of students).

It is possible to provide an entire course online. The ACS does this 
for its postgraduate Computer Professional Education Program 
<http://www.acs.org.au/cpeprogram/>. The Moodle system used has 
features for encouraging students to contribute to the online 
discussion and to stop any one student dominating the discussion (a 
feature which might be useful on Link).

But the new frontier I see is applying such tools in the classroom, 
to blend the online and face to face environments 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2007/07/mit-icampus-looks-usable-in-australia.html>.




Tom Worthington FACS HLM tom.worthington at tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd            ABN: 17 088 714 309
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617                http://www.tomw.net.au/
Visiting Fellow, ANU      Blog: http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/atom.xml