AUT-LATENT - Table 4

Staff development and other issues:

how do we start raising digital literacy skills in the diverse staff and students?
how do we provide all the technologies and the skills to use them..for teaching and learning?
set a lowest common denominator to start with and gradually lift it?
more important that students know than the lecturers how to use the technology?
make the digital skills a pre-requisite to enrolment?
are we dumbing everything down using technology - too easy to click and find the answer?
learning must be authentic (a given) so on the continuum that we move them on from learning-to-learn to evaluation, we have touchpoints and the technology is a tool
" I don't teach at all, I let them learn"
do we have formal training programmes for staff to get up to speed or do we have just in time, iterative approaches?
can't add a technological activity - eg a blog - without taking another activity out
is there an issue around sharing of valuable material as content, but the freeloader grabs and uses and never contributes something back as well

Thoughts for the afternoon - Challenges of a Flexible Future
Start off by choosing something everyone will be comfortable with
e-Learning will be advantagious only if students feel comfortable with it and are familiar with the technology systems which they will be using
Instyitutional support is critical e.g. if students use Portfolio, they want to take their input with them when the course is over.
Students are in different digital platforms from staff and both need to find shared space to interact in technology assisted learning.
Research by AUT journalism staff show that the concept of a "digital native" greatly exaggerates the extent to which all 29-22 year-olds are comfortable with Web 2.0 or Web 3.0 applications.
At times students are resistant to the idea of online learning and prefer didactic face to face teaching - this can be dependent on the different teaching styles exposed to. Staff can also be resistant to incorporating new technology/e learning systems in class
E learning will only work if students are motivated to use the devices available to them and they can see the benefits to their learning
If learning systems are internally developed, they could be custamised. However, many software (LMS) are developed by business companies, hence, minimal customisation. The drawback is in term of support if there are problems with the systems.