Posts By Tom Worthington

Higher Education High Horizons

At CCA-EDUCAUSE Australasia 2011 in Sydney the closing keynote talk on the first day was “Visions of the higher education horizon: possible futures” by Bryan Alexander, NITLE. But Bryan’s vision was still somewhat limited. He saw a future where scholarly papers were “peer reviewed” by anyone human on the planet. I suggest that it isRead… Read more »

E-learning in Remote Aboriginal Communities

Greetings from day 2 of CCA-EDUCAUSE Australasia 2011 in Sydney. Dennis Sharpe, Memorial University of Newfoundland discussed a study of “E-learning in Small Remote Aboriginal Communities”. They found that web based learning was accepted as a viable option for remote locations, using both asynchronous and synchronous. Some students use the e-learning as a supplement toRead… Read more »

Research Administration Online

At CCA-EDUCAUSE Australasia 2011 in Sydney, Simon Porter from University of Melbourne talked about “eResearch Administration: The Game will change”. He demonstrated the on-line information provided about staff at University of Melbourne. This provides a list of publications by each staff member. They also produce diagrams of who collaborates with who.University of Melbourne no longerRead… Read more »

Gallery of Modern Art Queensland

The Gallery of Modern Art Queensland (GOMA) proved an entertaining place to spend a half a day. The gallery is part of the Brisbane South Bank cultural precienct, next to the Queensland State Library. The venue was lively with many groups of school chldren interacting with modern artworks, such as a slippery slide (Carsten Holler’sRead… Read more »

Hi-Tech Higher Education

There are about 700 people registered for CCA-EDUCAUSE Australasia 2011 at Darling Harbour in Sydney this week. They are from universities, mostly librarians and ICT managers, plus a few educators, such as myself. The conference started Sunday with meetings of representatives from organisations such as CAUDIT and a tall ship harbour cruse for the restRead… Read more »

Learning To Teach Online Online

UNSW has a series of “Learning To Teach Online Episodes”. These consist of about twenty videos with sets of notes. The videos are five to then minutes each in interview format. The notes are about five pages of useful content, with some very useful references (and three pages of marketing material). This should be veryRead… Read more »

Pedagogy, Andragogy and Heutagogy

My presentation on “Learning Commons Technology” went well at the 2nd Annual Learning Commons Development and Design Forum, here in Brisbane. It happened that many of the examples of good design I used were detailed in other presentations by library staff and is some cases by the architects of those buildings.Dr. Ken Fisher Associate Professor,Read… Read more »

Pedagogy, Andragogy and Heutagogy

My presentation on “Learning Commons Technology” went well at the 2nd Annual Learning Commons Development and Design Forum, here in Brisbane. It happened that many of the examples of good design I used were detailed in other presentations by library staff and is some cases by the architects of those buildings.Dr. Ken Fisher Associate Professor,Read… Read more »

Architectural Design of Library Buildings

Sitting in a session of the 2nd Annual Learning Commons Development and Design Forum, in Brisbane, I noticed the delegate next to me reading the March 2011 edition of Architectural Record magazine on Library Design. There are about 241 articles in AR mentioning unviersity libraries. But I could find no mention of “Learning Commons” inRead… Read more »

University of Queensland Librarian on Change in Library Design and Role

Greetings from the 2nd Annual Learning Commons Development and Design Forum, Brisbane. The first speaker was Keith Webster, Librarian, University of Queensland.He started with the good old days where academic libraries were for scholars. The students were only admitted under sufferance and provided they were silent. He used the 1970s UQ biological library as anRead… Read more »