Academic Tea Talk 1/2009

Richard Ng gave an interesting tea talk on Online Supplemental Learning (OSI). The presentation is based on a paper that was presented at the AAOU2008 conference held in Tianjin, China last October. The paper won a sliver award. The attendees were a mixed group: Deans, Professors and our younger academicians including a couple of instructional designers and an editor from OUM.

Interesting approach to help overcome student weakness in basic mathematics - online supplemental instruction. The OSI model of instruction would include Pre-instructional Workshop, Coaching and Mentoring, and Short Video Clips on You-Tube. The model allows for collaborative work and clearly increases synergy in the discussion forums. Selected learners become mentors and provide help and guidance to the weaker learners; not a too far-fetched concept, since we have long heard of peer-tutoring. So it was good to see how it worked successfully online. When learners help others, it helps reinforce what they know and what they have learned. Being able to get help from the mentors, i.e. coursemates, will also help reduce the anxiety level of the weaker students who normally will not ask questions or ask for help. Keep in mind though that this does not mean that the tutors will no longer be doing anything. In fact, the tutors have to play an active role in coming up with the activities or assignments suited for collaborative learning. And it is the tutor who has carefully selected the learners who have the potential to be good mentors.

The addition of short video-clips on You-Tube further helps students grasp topics that are slightly more difficult to understand just by reading. They get the benefit of seeing how problems are worked out with or without the audio, as many times as needed to understand the methods used, and they can do it at their own time.

The OSI approach seems applicable to any course offered at OUM. According to our speaker, there is still more to be done, but one of the steps to be taken next will be to educate and train the OUM tutors nationwide on using OSI in their courses.

We thank Mr. Richard Ng for taking the time to share his work with us and we commend him and his team for their achievement.

Kick-off meeting for COL Performance Indicators

It was a good kick-off for OUM's continual improvement efforts. The SVP, as chairperson of the group, expressed that it was important for OUM to focus on quality in 2009.

The tools designed by COL will be one of the ways to help us achieve a certain level of standard. There are ten PIs. An 11th one on financial will be added.

Good start for quality at OUM!

IQRI Meeting 1/2009, 8 January

The first staff/department meeting for the year was held in the morning....we aim to achieve much more this year to help spur quality assurance efforts at OUM. Also in the pipeline are more research projects among OUM academicians and several innovative learning projects to help make learning more effective.

We're definitely looking forward to a better year!

8th Mobile Learning Meeting

The team met for the 8th time this morning.

Most exciting is knowing how close we are to getting the mobile learning resources in place. The past 6 weeks were challenging for every faculty member but deadlines are slowly out of the way and we can now re-focus on the project.

Harvinder, Ruzita and Hazna are preparing various parts of the content for the OUMH 1103 course. We're now using blogger (for a start) to post the contents unless there's a better alternative. CiDT is still preparing the graphics, before the whole file is compressed and uploaded. They said the first content is expected to be ready at the end of this week.

First semester students will receive their first SMS on the project next week. Christine's working on this.

The mobile learning portal was conceptualised before the holidays. The CiDT team will be working on this.

Almost every mobile learning research team is now on Twitter so that we keep close, quick and convenient communication in terms of updates on what everyone is doing or thinking right now with regards the project. With email you'd have to sift through all the other messages and that takes time.

Each representative from the Faculty & CGS will next be identifying their respective courses for May and September. I think once we get the hang of what works and what doesn't, the contents can be generated quite fast.

The most impressive smart pen looks very promising and we're testing it soon. We're very hopeful that this device will help further our project.

How smart can a pen be?

It's been a long time since I was impressed, no . . . that's an understatement . . . . very impressed with something that looks like a normal pen and normal note book (with dotted pages) but can be, listen to this, a personal productivity tool, a learning aide, an e-learning content creator, and a personal secretary during meetings, lectures, conferences, discussions, and more.

What I saw, at this moment in time, is a tool that OUM could use to develop e-learning content. Designed to help someone write notes or draw and at the same time capture the lecturer's voice in the classroom, or if in a meeting, capture the discussions during the meeting, can actually be used to conduct a tutorial on how to solve math equations, or understand graphs, diagrams, and so on.

Notes/images and voice can be stored in the pen's memory and recalled instantaneously with great ease. This can be played back, listened with or without earphones or uploaded to the Internet and played back through audio streaming. Imagine....a whole world of possibilities!

Check it out. It's a smart pen designed to help us to never miss a word! Visit: http://www.livescribe.com/.

Or, if you prefer to listen to what the smart pen is all about, click on:
http://www.livescribe.com/media/mp3/070530/ls_chpt2_070530.mp3

Dr. Safiah will soon be able to borrow a test unit to record a "tutorial" to see how it can really help our students who are poor in Mathematics.

Christine, we owe it to you for insisting that I view the demo! You were absolutely right . . . an intelligent tool for sure.....our mobile learners will absolutely benefit.

Come back for our report on this innovative tool next week.

Conferences to aim for

If you're looking for conferences on educational technology or those related to education, visit: http://elearnspace.org/media/EdTechConferencesJanToAug2009crw.doc.

The list is impressive, but by no means comprehensive. Still, a lot to choose from.

In addition, don't forget the SEAAIR 2009 conference in Penang in October. For details: www.ptpm.usm.my/seaair2009/

Hello 2009

2009 will be the best year yet!

With three main activities related to quality management, research and innovation, the IQRI team is set to make a bigger difference in each of these three areas, thus contributing to overall quality improvement, increasing the number of research activities and contributing to the quality of education at OUM through learning innovations.

Visit us often. We will keep you updated on our activities. We will also be providing useful resources from time to time.