Posted on November 16, 2011 by amurphy

Senior Leadership Forum

This morning we, the team here at the digital futures institute, were offered the opportunity to present some of our projects to the members of USQ’s senior leadership. Sue and I presented the Pleiades project and we received good feedback and some fantastic insights.

We are increasingly discovering that  although this project will allow us to cross so many hurdles in terms of improving the digital skills and learning experience of students without internet access, there are still a number of bridges that need to be built and barriers to break down before this project can become a successful mainstream alternative. There is also, as always experienced when introducing new ideas, some fear.

I have jotted down some of the questions we were asked today here and we will work on answering them one by one over the next few weeks.

1. How many incarcerated students do we actually have here at USQ and is there a sufficient market to make all this work worthwhile.

2. Why only incarcerated students, why are we not looking at rolling this project out to students in rural and remote areas.

3. Why should we be doing this at all? What’s in it for us, these students will most probably not be able to work in their chosen careers after they have been released anyway.

4. What about the tougher courses that require surfing of live websites or practical training experiences, how will we offer incarcerated students this type of training.

5. How are we going to mainstream this successfully, academics and lecturers already have too much work and there just isn’t the time available to develop specific materials for a small group of students.

6. How frequently will the Moodle study desk in the correctional centre be updated. Will there be a lag. What if the lecturer adds new content to the course?

7. How will the lecturer interact with and communicate with the incarcerated offender.

8. How will we get past copyright constraints with regard to articles and multimedia that needs to be embedded in the course.

9. What would the requirements be for converting an existing course to portable moodle course for incarcerated students.

A number of these questions are really controversial but we are aiming at getting these discussions out in the open so that we remain transparent and consider all the tough little details thoroughly. If you have any more questions to add to this or would like to contribute to the discussion please leave us a note.

Sue will be adding her thoughts on this event shortly. As always comments and suggestions are very welcome and any feedback that would help make this journey easier will be appreciated. We would love to use this blog to remain connected to stakeholders here at USQ and in the wider global community who may be affected by these issues and would like to share their concerns.

Dr Angela Murphy – Mission Achiever

Image credit: Fernando Silveira, Prison bars, used under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic Licence.

 

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Posted on November 16, 2011 by amurphy

Behind Bars

Helen and I participated in an informal meeting at the correctional centre on Friday to demonstrate the eReaders to education officers and managers at the facility.  The responses to the project from Queensland Corrective Services, without being too optimistic, have been so far been overwhelmingly positive with only a few hurdles still to cross.

A major hurdle was created when the correctional centres security systems prevented Helen from first entering and later leaving the facility, sealing her in the entry chamber. We seriously considered leaving her to proceed with the project as an in house resident :)

The second hurdle will be presenting the project and the eReaders to the Commissioner. If we receive approval and if our funding applications are approved we will be able to proceed with developing the coursework materials.

Dr Angela Murphy – Mission Achiever

Image credit: Chris, Books, used under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic Licence.


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Posted on November 11, 2011 by admin

Going back in time

The project is still waiting for ethics approval both from USQ’s ethics committee as well as from the Department of Correctional Services but we have already hit a snag. In order to be able to safely hand an incarcerated student an eBook reader containing learning materials we need to find a model that has no WiFi or 3G access, no removable batteries and no SD or other memory card slot. This nearly turned into an impossible task as even the cheapest and worst brands currently available on the market have advanced significantly and at a minimum have at least a memory card slot available.

Our hero arrived in the form of the SONY PRS-350 Pocketbook Reader. Released in 2010 the Reader is no longer available from Sony but there are still some out there and we have bought as many as we can lay our hands on. The biggest concern to us at the moment though is what we are going to do if the project is successful and we are able to launch this type of learning innovation on a larger scale. We only hope that Sony will take mercy on us and re-release the pocketbook which would make learning far more accessible to prisoners around the world than it presently is.

There is a message in this trial for us to remember as we continue our digital learning journey. Firstly, always have a back-up plan and secondly keep in mind that uninformed innovation can so easily alienate or increase hurdles for learners and we need to keep one ear open for those voices.

Speaking of voices, we would love to hear yours. If you have any comments or solutions for us on how we could overcome this problem in a different way please leave us a comment and let us know.

 

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Posted on November 1, 2011 by admin

Welcome to the Pleiades Project

As mentioned previously in our “e-Readers for education” blog post on the 15th of September, we are starting on an exciting new project exploring the use of eReaders within vulnerable populations. The eBook reader is a handy little device for supporting the transformation of learning as it assists in overcoming a number of problems that could possibly hinder the education of vulnerable populations such as a lack of electricity, access to text books and limited internet connectivity.

USQ is currently undertaking to enable all its students to benefit further from digital resources and this includes students in more unique situations such as the large body of incarcerated students that are studying through USQ. From January 2012 we will be conducting project PLEIADES at a Correctional Centre in Queensland with a number of incarcerated students enrolled in the Tertiary Preparation Program (TPP1720) offered by USQ’s Open Access College.

USQ will develop and pilot a version of our Learning Management System (LMS) called Portable Moodle that can operate independently without needing an internet connection. The project will also investigate using eBook readers, which have no wireless or 3G connectivity capabilities, for students to access course and reference materials in order to extend learning beyond the computer lab and into personal and leisure time.

This aim of this study is to determine whether e-learning technologies that are independent of internet access, yet still enable students to access USQ courses electronically are able to improve access, retention and completion rates of incarcerated students as well as give them an experience comparable to that of distance students who are not incarcerated.

Please come back often to see how we are doing and to offer comments and suggestions to guide our journey.

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