Conference Day One: Tuesday, 06th August 2019
8:30 am - 9:00 am Coffee And Registration
9:00 am - 9:10 am Conference Opening – Remarks from the Conference Chairperson
9:10 am - 9:50 am Victoria University’s Radical Rethink of Education With Deliberate Learning Design Principles to Significantly Improve Engagement and Results
Historically, education has been taught in much the same way. However, the industry and employer needs have changed drastically and students are expected to graduate with practical and real world applicable skills. Victoria University’s First Year Model was developed in an impressive 8 months, with every unit and course redesigned with a learning design approach leading to a phenomenal impact and significant improvement in student results.
This session will talk about:
- Driving culture change in educators and what they think education is by systematically introducing learning design to improve learning consistency
- Utilising learning design to develop content that collate with how students learn for significant consequences of high impact and retention success
9:50 am - 10:30 am How UTS is Transforming Postgraduate Learning: The Role of the Learning Design Team in Developing Future Proof Skills
Creating a successful co-design partnership between academics and learning designers can be challenging, with academics increasingly expected to have not just subject matter expertise but also digital course design and facilitation skills. Our Learning Design Team works with academics to ensure constructive alignment of the course, to bring together the best of online and on-campus activities and to focus on student experience, ensuring that approaches to teaching and learning prepare students to contribute effectively in the workplace and beyond.
- Hear how UTS has been rethinking offerings for a postgraduate audience
- Explore the UTS Model of Learning and the postgraduate.futures approach
- Take a dive into the successful partnership between UTS learning designers and academics in the Graduate School of Health
10:30 am - 10:50 am Speed Networking
10:50 am - 11:20 am Morning Tea
11:20 am - 12:00 pm Sourcing, Developing and Retaining High Quality Learning Design Talent
How should education institutions endeavour to attract the best learning designers and ensure that they stay? Initiatives need be put in place to structure the role differently so that it is more specific and have more layers for differentiation.
- Highlighting the stakeholder management and engagement role of learning designers
- Setting expectations about what the role entails to ensure respect and retention
- Questioning the concept of insourcing or outsourcing learning design to suit different strategies and needs
12:00 pm - 12:40 pm Massey University’s Adoption of a New Operating Model to Enable Innovation in its Curricula
Innovative curriculum is at the heart of Massey’s endeavour to provide contemporary, high quality education to a student cohort that is defined by its diversity. Changing the operating model to ensure that Massey’s curricula is fit for purpose, innovative and is meeting the needs of the 21st Century learner is no easy task. A recent investment in learning designer roles to partner with academic and professional staff as well as student communities is key to the successful adoption of new operating models. With a focus on simplification that reduces waste in time and effort, coupled with building meaningful relationships to ensure enduring change, the familiarities of the learning designer role at Massey is being challenged, redefined and reconceptualised.
- How is the learning designer role been viewed at Massey and how is it changing?
- The influence of adopting a new operating on traditional curriculum development and support roles
- How the student voice is guiding curricula development and affecting learning designers work
12:40 pm - 1:40 pm Lunch Break
1:40 pm - 2:20 pm The University of Queensland’s Blended Learning Project: Redesigning Large Courses to Improve Student Engagement and Student Outcomes
UQ’s has a team of 7 learning designers working to blend many of UQ’s largest courses as part of their student strategy. The redesign timeframe is over a period of 6 months. They have developed systems to support the LDs to do this work building on processes evolved from several years of MOOC work. Lessons learnt from that work have been adapted to designing and developing a blended course. Additionally they are introducing the Agile methodology and sprints to the development process.
Linda will talk about:
- Designing and developing a blended course and measures put in place to ensure these courses meet good practice (Higher Education Learning Framework and the UQ2U Guidelines)
- Creating trust between the teams and taking the time to prepare academics for change
- Utilising evaluation data and data analytics to inform the design for both the redeveloped course and any future runs, and later to guide the academic during course delivery
2:20 pm - 3:00 pm Encountered Learning – Lessons From a Radical Learning Design
Flinders University is in the midst of a radical reconfiguring of its fully online Graduate Certificate in Education (Higher Education). Moves include repositioning the nature and locale of ‘expertise’; treating students as peer ‘practitioners’ and co-creators of the curriculum; provoking active engaged enquiry within one’s own communities of practice; and most radical of all, a continuously negotiated ‘dialogic’ assessment strategy. Sounds exciting - but how is it really going? Is it too much? - or maybe, not enough? Is there a sweet spot between unfettered boldness and the orthodoxies of our educational strategies?
This session exposes and explores in unabashed frankness:
- Configuring leading-edge educational strategies to provide an ‘encountered’ learning approach
- The processes for mapping course philosophies, structures and strategies programmatically
- The strange ‘third-space’ position of being a learning designer who teaches
- The difficulties and gifts of being ‘in’ an emergent curriculum design
3:00 pm - 3:30 pm Afternoon Tea
3:30 pm - 4:10 pm PANEL DISCUSSION: What is the Influence of Technology on Learning Design?
Speakers:
Dr Charlotte Brack Director, Transformation & Learning (ACTING) Swinburne University of Technology
Linda MacDonald Learning Designer and Team Lead The University of Queensland
Von (Yvonne) Button Manager of Learning Design Federation University Australia
Jonathan Powles Pro Vice-Chancellor (Academic Innovation) University of New England (AU)
Dr Charlotte Brack Director, Transformation & Learning (ACTING) Swinburne University of Technology
Linda MacDonald Learning Designer and Team Lead The University of Queensland
Von (Yvonne) Button Manager of Learning Design Federation University Australia
Jonathan Powles Pro Vice-Chancellor (Academic Innovation) University of New England (AU)
The influx of new technology and tools has forced higher education faculty members to examine their pedagogy, how they engage students, and how they use technology to teach. These new ways are changing the way society learns, interacts, communicates, and does business and as such, learning design is crucial is adapting to this. Panelists will discuss:
- How to best utilize technologies and tools to enhance and reinforce knowledge and skills to reach student outcomes
- Engaging in meaningful learning experiences through integration of technology which compliments other active, constructive and authentic learning
- Empowering staff to take advantage of the benefits of technology to relate and apply to learner needs
Dr Charlotte Brack
Director, Transformation & Learning (ACTING)Swinburne University of Technology
