It’s hard to believe just over a week ago one of the biggest learning technology events in the UK took place – the Association for Learning Technology conference, or ALT-C, as it’s known. Held at the University of Warwick between 6-8 September, 2016, the conference included some inspiring keynotes. Josie Fraser cautioned on the dangers of being exposed to trolls when working professionally in the online space; Jane Secker discussed the ethics of copyright for online learning; Lia Commissar busted some neuroscience myths including the concept of ‘learning styles’; and Ian Livingstone took us down memory lane in terms of the potential for games to help with learning (it’s always good to go to a conference that shows a video of Tomb Raider gameplay). I missed Donna Lanclos and Dave White at the end but thanks to technology(!) was able to catch up with their keynote and all the parallel sessions in the main theatre via the recordings on YouTube.
I presented our Enhancement Themes work on an institutional framework to support transitions to blended learning on behalf of colleagues Josephine Adekola and Kerr Gardiner. We have worked closely with the institutional team and key stakeholders to develop a framework to support institutional transitions to enhanced blended learning – more about that soon in another blog post.
I also presented Angela Jaap and I’s work on researching the experiences and impact of a course on technology-enhanced learning (TEL) on teachers’ academic practice, delivered as part of the PGCAP (you can watch the talk here). This course seeks to encourage educators to be more critical of technology, and the results so far evidence this. Results also indicate that the success with which teachers can implement what they have learned is influenced by contextual enablers and delimiters. I was also really interested to hear about excellent staff development initiatives at Dublin City University (DCU) courtesy of Lisa Donaldson and Mark Glynn (a recording of their talk is here).
John Maguire – who has recently left LTU to become the College of Arts E-Learning Innovation Officer – gave an excellent presentation on video training workshops delivered to teaching staff at Glasgow with Craig Brown and Ger Malcolm. Not surprisingly, there was a lot of interest from other institutions – the technical and pedagogical tips from John were well received. And finally, John Kerr, Learning Innovation Officer at the College of Social Sciences got a mention as ALT reflected on 10 years of Learning Technologist of the Year competition winners.
The conference generated over 6000 #altc tweets – unfortunately more than Storify was able to curate in one go! However, I have created a Storify of just my own tweets and interactions, and there is another Storify by Jisc which covers issues around assessment, analytics and digital capabilities. There was also an ALT Scotland SIG meeting and a new SIG has been set up by Kris Roger and Colin Loughlin to further explore technology enabled active learning spaces.
Staff at the University of Glasgow can sign up for free to be members through the associate membership scheme.