Paper
Abstracts
Universities and learning
Measuring the value-added by Australian Universities.
Hamish Coates
Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER)
Interest is growing rapidly in finding ways to measure the value that higher education adds to individuals and their communities. The concept ‘value added’ is playing a more significant role in higher education discourse, as is interest in techniques for measurement.
I will outline the nature and contemporary relevance of value added measures, and describe approaches that can be used to measure and demonstrate the value added by university education.
Why are value added measures important for universities? What can universities do to measure value added? What’s currently going on?
The paper will focus on using objective measures and data on student engagement to identify the value that university education adds to students’ learning and development.
A topic of increasing importance to every university’s education and quality management activities.
Strategic organizational direction setting: a workplace learning opportunity.
Mary M. Somerville & Gordon Yusko
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library; San José State University Library
Conference Theme: Lifelong Learning: Reflecting on Successes and Framing Futures Conference Sub Theme: Thinking Otherwise for the Future Submission Category: Referred paper which advances ‘grounded theory’ on infusing lifelong learning into workplace culture. San José, California is the capital of Silicon Valley. The Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library in San José is a future-oriented collaboration between the San José State University Library and the San José Public Library. In the shared facility, library services such as reference and information, technical services and circulation cross over institutional boundaries and must be supported by integrated and adaptive models that embed lifelong learning into the organizational culture. Silicon Valley residents readily access abundant information sources, adopt new and emerging technology tools, participate actively in social networking and opportunities for creating digital content related to their lifelong learning activities. Therefore, to be effective, staff members in the Dr. King Library must also exhibit capabilities and critical thinking necessary for contemporary information, communication, and technology literacy. An online education program introduced library staff members to Learning 2.0 tools from December 2006 through March 2007. Now they use these tools to enable redefinition of service models and workforce competencies in a joint strategic planning process that commenced in July 2007. The Learning 2.0-enabled strategic planning process aims to clarify shared vision, mission, directions and concurrently, both advance participants’ information, communication, and technology proficiencies and their lifelong learning and innovation capabilities. Cultivation of these 21st Century skills occurs through intentional organizational dialogue aimed at enriching domain (content) knowledge and stimulating continuous learning. In addition, to ensure diffusion and participatory reflection, a new organizational communication system aims to promote information exchange and enable knowledge creation. Learning 2.0 proficiencies are also generating inquiry-based relationships with campus and community constituencies through initiation of participatory (re)design processes for learning environments, services, and programs. We will present elements of our organizational transformation model which can be transferred or adapted to other libraries. At this point, we believe that these key elements pair learning and innovation skills with information, communication, and technology skills that purposely advance both inclusive workplace excellence and lifelong learning capabilities. In addition, because sustainable change depends on the presence of appropriate support systems, we propose a 21st Century organizational infrastructure which facilitates professional development opportunities, dialogue-based organizational learning, and user-centered outcomes assessment.
Twenty one years of later life learning: reflecting back, focussing forward.
Lesley Hart
University of Strathclyde
In 2008, the Learning in Later Life (3L) programme at the University of Strathclyde in Scotland will celebrate its 21st birthday. This vibrant and varied programme now annually offers a vast array of learning opportunities to over 3,000 students aged 50 and is one of the largest and best established later life learning programmes in Europe. The first part of this conference paper will analyse the numerous ways the university successfully addressed factors that traditionally inhibit older adults from engaging in learning. The important role played by the learning in later life students both in shaping the programme and also in creating a supportive social network through its own students’ association will be highlighted. The success of the 3L programme scotches the myth that older adults can’t or don’t want to undertake new learning and its ongoing sustainability has made it an integral part of the university’s lifelong learning portfolio. The second part of the Paper will identify a number of factors which may affect the future shape and content of the 3L programme. Results of a survey of new 3L students undertaken in 2007 will be reported and changing student demographics will be discussed. The legal and ethical implications of recently introduced Age Discrimination legislation which will be addressed. Older adults are still significantly underrepresented in higher education in the UK. The 3L programme has provided a bridge to learning for many thousands of older adults living in the west of Scotland. It is, however, important not only to celebrate past successes but also to focus forward to ensure that the University continues to respond creatively to older adults’ evolving learning needs and interests. Note The author was responsible for establishing the 3L programme in 1987. She is currently the Director of the Centre for Lifelong learning in which the 3L programme is based.
Lifelong learning and wiki: assessing communication skills for an emerging paradigm.
Brendan Murphy
Central Queensland University
The emergence of semantic web technology represents a new informational paradigm with a complex relationship to lifelong learning. Nowhere is this more evident than in the phenomenon of Wikipedia in particular and the Wiki media form in general. On the one hand Wikis readily foster lively topic-specific online communities and foreground the contestability of knowledge so important to lifelong learning. On the other, these communities tend towards the atomistic and the communal process of knowledge-construction in which they engage can downplay the importance of the modality of different information sources. This paper illustrates how these tensions were negotiated in a Wiki-based assessment piece in an undergraduate Communications course and points the way towards a pedagogical approach to Wiki that encourages exploration while assessing sound communications practices in this new medium.
Online learning, multimedia & future directions
Only Connect: communities of practice and university students-librarian as conduit.
Jess Tyndall
Gus Fraenkel Medical Library Flinders University of South Australia
Communities of practice are learning communities for professionals. In the health area there have been a number of strong developments resulting in some exceptional resources like the UK National Specialist Libraries, which have been designed and developed to “identify and meet the information needs of particular communities of practice”. This presentation considers how liaison librarians can contribute to the development of lifelong learning in medical and health science students, for whom graduating from university might previously have meant leaving behind familiar resources and learning tools which would effectively not be replaced in their working lives. Liaison librarians are in a unique position to promote to students, an awareness of online communities of practice which are high quality, free, easy to access and to use, and are fully supported by a strong knowledge management base. Fostering this awareness in students means they are far better placed to progress as lifelong learners and as established members of a learning community are better equipped to move seamlessly into their professional lives.
Teacher trainees’ readiness to use multimedia in the classroom.
Hasniza Nordin & Rosna Awang Hashim
Universiti Utara Malaysia
The use of multimedia in classroom instruction has become common in many schools and higher educational institutions. In Universiti Utara Malaysia, several courses in the education faculty are integrated with multimedia technology as a tool in classroom instruction. This study aims to identify teacher trainees’ readiness to use multimedia in classroom instruction. Knowledge, skills, attitude, perceived usefulness and intention to use multimedia in teaching and learning were examined among final year educational technology undergraduate students. Findings of this study showed satisfactory level of readiness (m=78.47) among teacher trainees. Respondents acknowledged having good knowledge (m=3.77), skills (m=2.98), high positive attitude (m=3.07) and perceived the usefulness of multimedia (m=3.36). However, no significant differences were found in gender, computer ownership and number of courses taken for the abovementioned variables. With regard to prior computer experience, this study indicated significant difference in the level of knowledge among respondents (F=4.19, p<.05). In addition, knowledge (r=.34, p<.001), skills (r=.41, p<.001), attitude (r=.45, p<.001) and perceived usefulness (r=.39, p<.001) all had positive relationships with intention to use. Attitude, knowledge and perceived usefulness were important predictors of intention to use multimedia (r2 = 27.9%), with attitude serving as the best predictor of intention to use multimedia.
Postdoctoral and early career research work as continued education.
Serene H-J Choi, Timo A. Nieminen & Catherine Manathunga
University of Queensland
In fields such as physics, postdoctoral work—typically a minimum of 2–3 years of research, virtually a second PhD without a thesis—is a de facto prerequisite for long-term employment in academia. Where research employment is dominated by the universities, it can be the only path along which the graduate can attempt to remain in the field of doctoral study. While the prevalence of short-term postdoctoral work certainly appears to depend on the short-term nature of much of the available research funding, postdoctoral researchers—at least those likely to remain active researchers in their field—can demonstrate significant improvement in their research skills, including the ability to work productively in a team environment, preparation of research funding, and the pursuit of further funding as well as the traditional fundamentals of their discipline. As there are no curricula for postdoctoral research workers, the level to which deliberate training is systematic is highly variable, from being non-existent, with the worker essentially left to self-train, to structured mentoring programs. The distinction between doctoral and postdoctoral learning and research training is important for an understanding of the postdoctoral experience. We will present postdoctoral fellows views and experiences on it based on their past research training experiences in physics. In addition, there is a high level of international mobility in the field of physics at the postdoctoral level, and this allows us to gain valuable insight into international views on research training, postdoctoral work as further research training, and attitudes towards research and academia over a broad international background. We will include an international perspective in our discussion of postdoctoral research training.
Information and education technology: a playful investigation of possible futures.
Melanie Lazarow
University of Melbourne
The presentation and use of information has been transformed by the WWW and in turn there is a dialectical reinterpretation of what information professionals need to be in the new world of information. Are we puppets, clowns, guides, mystics, or inventors? The University of Melbourne has the task of inventing a library of the future. Are libraries and librarians going to make the transition into this century in the way libraries have survived other revolutions, industrial, material and societal? What do librarians need to do to both challenge norms and expectations and enable the best possible use of information towards a common good? How does the librarian place his/herself in a post-colonial and neo-liberal world to pose possibilities for another world? Where does the use of new technology come in? This paper investigates these questions through the “eyes” of learning management systems and qualitative software.
