Speaker
Description
What happens when an experienced educational technology teacher who has run Professional Development workshops becomes a student again and goes through the identical learning experiences that he puts his own students through? That's what happened to me when I enrolled in a two-year Master of Creative Writing degree at Macquarie University, in Australia. Suddenly, I was the student on the other end trying to navigate the online Learner Management System utilised by MQU, and while I was familiar with many things such as the user-interface, there were many instances that left me frustrated and questioning my own professional practices. Some examples were simple things such as where global course Announcements were made, while others were more complex like where multimedia materials were housed and how they were accessed by students. While taking this course online, I encountered many frustrations that are probably very similar to some of those that our own students might face.
In this presentation, I want to reflect on how we, as educators using educational technology, can improve the way we set up and implement our courses. By doing so, we can begin to improve and enhance the user-experience of our students and help them overcome preventable technological challenges they might face, particularly using software such as Learner Management Systems that are likely in a second language.
Educational technology is a ubiquitous part of the learner experience now, so it's vital that we understand how to make the transition from classroom to computer as smooth as possible, particularly in a Japanese context, where many students will encounter technologies such as LMSs for the first time when they begin university.
| Keywords | LMS, professional development, teacher education, best practice |
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