Speaking Personally—With Ken Udas

Abstract

The context of rural Alaska provides many challenges for the University of Alaska, Fairbanks in the delivery of education via distance technologies. Audioconference courses have been and continue to be the backbone of the University's distance delivery system. This paper discusses the potential of a FirstClass^® Server using telecommunications, e‐mail, student‐to‐student interaction, submission of assignments, timely instructor feedback, and the transfer of files and multimedia documents in an asynchronous manner. Survey data were collected from students who received instruction using this system, as well as the traditional audioconference delivery method. Analysis of the data indicated some positive aspects of the FirstClass system that enhance the distance‐delivered instruction.     

Independent Learning,MOOCs, and the Open Badges Infrastructure

Distance Education in Canada Edited by Ian Mugridge and David Kaufman. (Beckenham, Kent: Croom Helm, 1986. 317 pp.)

Teaching Telecourses: Opportunities and Options, A FACULTY HANDBOOK by Toby K. Levine.     

Balancing supportive relationships and developing independence: an activity theory approach to understanding feedback in context for master’s students

Abstract

Master’s students are expected to be self-regulating and independent learners. Dialogic feedback has been identified as one way of promoting such independence. There continues to be concern about the extent to which master’s students are achieving this level of functioning. This study aimed to identify feedback practices and contexts which facilitated student engagement and independence. Working with students as co-researchers, interviews were conducted with 27 master’s students from three programmes. Activity theory was used as an analytical tool to generate understanding of feedback in the social context of each programme. Findings indicate there can be tension between factors which promote dialogical feedback and those which promote independence, and that active dialogic feedback with staff may limit student engagement with peer feedback.     

Teacher preparation: A collaborative model

Abstract

Criticism of education and teacher preparation persists. The “Teachers Educating and Motivating Students,” or TEAMS, model was developed to address this criticism. The TEAMS model has been structured using a Professional Development School (PDS) concept as the core component. The model is a competency‐based, structured block program featuring concurrent enrollment in groups of courses and a corresponding field component.

Evaluation of the TEAMS program is a continuing process. Completion of a “perceptions” survey and a workplace competencies instrument by students and mentors/administrators revealed that the TEAMS program is accomplishing intended goals. Furthermore, t tests revealed only one significant difference in perceived adequacy between students and mentors/administrators on the workplace competencies. The data also revealed an overall positive attitude toward the project and satisfaction regarding the achievement of workplace competencies.     

Juxtapositioning Geriatrics and Art: The Essence of Caring,Carer, and Cared-for in Films

The need to revolutionize geriatric nursing is dawning. However, there is a negative view regarding this nursing field. The dearth of literature on the use of theatrical films to surface universal realities in a care-driven profession has led to this attempt of bringing to reality the essences of caring, carer, and cared-for and their interactions with each other. This paper presents an innovation of selecting a film (Away From Her) to surface the essences, or lebenswelt, of three universal realities: caring, carer, and cared-for. Content analysis and appreciative inquiry were utilized to achieve the objectives of this study. This bold attempt to tap the field of art, particularly films, has led to the genesis of three themes that resulted from the interaction of the objects under study. The C³ (Carer-Caring-Cared-for) Interaction Model crystallizes the nexus between and among living, learning, and loving in geriatric practice.     

The role of design ethics in maintaining students' privacy: A call to action to learning designers in higher education

Maintaining students' privacy in higher education, an integral aspect of learning design and technology integration, is not only a matter of policy and law but also a matter of design ethics. Similar to faculty educators, learning designers in higher education play a vital role in maintaining students' privacy by designing learning experiences that rely on online technology integration. Like other professional designers, they need to care for the humans they design for by not producing designs that infringe on their privacy, thus, not causing harm. Recognizing that widely used instructional design models are silent on the topic and do not address ethical considerations such as privacy, we focus this paper on how design ethics can be leveraged by learning designers in higher education in a practical manner, illustrated through authentic examples. We highlight where the ethical responsibility of learning designers comes into the foreground when maintaining students' privacy and well-being, especially in online settings. We outline an existing ethical decision-making framework and show how learning designers can use it as a call to action to protect the students they design for, strengthening their ethical design capacity.

Practitioner notes

What is already known about this topic

• Existing codes of ethical standards from well-known learning design organizations call upon learning designers to protect students' privacy without clear guidance on how to do so.
• Design ethics within learning design is often discussed in abstract ways with principles that are difficult to apply.
• Most, if not all, design models that learning design professionals have learned are either silent on design ethics and/or do not consider ethics as a valid dimension, thus, making design ethics mostly excluded from learning design graduate programs.
• Practical means for engaging in ethical design practice are scarce in the field.

What this paper adds

• A call for learning designers in higher education to maintain and protect students' privacy and well-being, strengthening their ethical design capacity.
• A demonstration of how to use a practical ethical decision-making framework as a designerly tool in designing for learning to maintain and protect students' privacy and well-being.
• Authentic examples—in the form of vignettes—of ethical dilemmas/issues that learning designers in higher education could face, focused on students' privacy.
• Methods—using a practical ethical decision-making framework—for learning design professionals in higher education, grounded in the philosophy of designers as the guarantors of designs, to be employed to detect situations where students' privacy and best interests are at risk.
• A demonstration of how learning designers could make stellar design decisions in service to the students they design for and not to the priorities of other design stakeholders.

Implications for practice and/or policy

• Higher education programs/institutions that prepare/employ learning designers ought to treat the topics of the designer's responsibility and design ethics more explicitly and practically as one of the means to maintain and protect students' privacy, in addition to law and policies.
• Learning designers in higher education ought to hold a powerful position in their professional practice to maintain and protect students' privacy and well-being, as an important aspect of their ethical design responsibilities.
• Learning designers in higher education ought to adopt a design thinking mindset in order to protect students' privacy by (1) challenging ideas and assumptions regarding technology integration in general and (2) detecting what is known in User Experience (UX) design as “dark patterns” in online course design.