The Australian Research Council sets two-week periods when competitive grants will open

This is way more specific than the three-month timeframe the council has used for years and addresses a common cause of complaint, that such open windows made planning for life and work hard indeed

So why, finally, now?

Cynics suggest it might be because QUT VC Margaret Sheil is commissioned by the government to review the ARC, including,  how “it can meet current and future needs and maintain the trust of the research sector,” (CMM August 31). But what can you expect from cynics?

In Features this morning

Merlin Crossley (UNSW) on why digital courses don’t last and why creating content will depend on great teachers combining discipline specific knowledge, digital tech know-how and a love of teaching.

with Angel Calderon on the new Times Higher ranking, the ins and outs of where is up and down and what matters most (and doesn’t), HERE.

and Tim Winkler (Twig Marketing) on outrage over early uni offers and why it misses the point

plus Lynne Hunt (Uni Southern Queensland) and Denise Chalmers (UWA) on the loss of learning resources for uni teachers. This week’s selection by Commissioning Editor Sally Kift.

And Expert Opinion on Open Data

Mark Hahnel (Figshare) suggests, “a future of ubiquitous research data publishing in academia is in reach. It may prove to be a step change in knowledge discovery if all stakeholders continue to push for unobstructed, equitable data publishing with high quality metadata for humans and machines.” As long, that is, as researchers want their data to be open. He, talks about it HERE

Damien Cahill starts as general secretary of the National Tertiary Education at peak-business time, with enterprise bargaining on or soon to start at universities across the country

And so Dr Cahill nominates, “fair pay rises, more secure jobs and sensible workloads,” as core issues.

But he also focuses on casual staff and the “far too many examples” of them not being paid for all hours worked. Plus, “the scourge of insecure work” – two-thirds of university staff are on fixed-term or casual contacts.

Apart from the obvious, that people should be paid the rate for the job, which they have not been at universities across the country, this makes political sense.

Early career casual staff will be voting in union elections for years to come. And they can be a powerful voting bloc.

Dr Cahill was elected comfortably, 60 per cent of the vote in the recent election. But his opponent Anastasia Kanjere campaigned hard among casual staff. With only 20 per cent or so of NTEU members voting this year, the challenge next election will be to get the vote out – and casual staff have a lot at stake.

People on the move or not engaged with what’s going on need to hear

Natural Hazards Research Australia asked for ideas on how to reach them and Kamarah Pooley (Fire and Rescue NSW) and Mark Owens (Country Fire Authority, Victoria) answered.

They propose local info on emergencies that plays when visitors to a region at risk log on to WIFI where they are staying, or eating.

Natural Hazards Research is heir to the two former bushfire and related cooperative research centres  (CMM August 1) and just months in appears already to have a higher profile.

Compared to what? Effects of social and temporal comparison standards of feedback in an e-learning context from International Journal of Education Technology in Higher Education

This rich article from Janson et al. seems to state the obvious at first glance, in that students perform better when the approach taken to assessment and feedback aligns with their personal preferences. It still offers some valuable insights into the nature of evaluation – whether learners are judged on their performance based on that of their peers or based on their past performance – and also whether feedback is largely descriptive or offers direction for improvement. The affordances of education technologies to support more personalised forms of evaluation are alluded to but the question of how this is done by educators is left to the practitioners.

***

Accessible Online Learning: A Preliminary Investigation of Educational Technologists’ and Faculty Members’ Knowledge and Skills from TechTrends

Understanding the needs of students with disabilities in Higher Ed is slowly growing but this paper shows that there is still much room for improvement when it comes to designing accessible learning resources and environments. Lowenthal and Lomellini acknowledge the multi-faceted nature of these activities in a modern university, investigating perceptions of the knowledge of both educators and “education technologists” – their catchall term for Third Space education advisors such as learning designers, academic developers and ed techs. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they note that the latter group tend to be better equipped for this work and they offer some practical suggestions for closing the gap.

***

Learning design, work integrated learning and microcredentials: Making it all fit from ASCILITE TELall Blog

Keith Heggart’s case study of the development of the UTS Grad Cert in Learning Design outlines some of the innovative and practical approaches to course design that you would kind of hope to get from something with a learning design focus – the use of micro-credentials, a strong focus on practitioner voices and experience and an emphasis on building community in the space highlight good 21^st century practice.

***

Instructor insights from MIT Open Courseware

The best MOOC I have ever taken is MIT’s 11.133x Implementation and Evaluation of Education Technology. (Yes, I am that sad and nerdy). The Instructor Insights pages for their open courses illustrate the strength of their approach to this space, here providing a rich explanation of the underpinning pedagogy, organisation and practice behind an introductory biology unit.

***

Microsoft Designer – Beautiful AI-infused designs in a flash from TikTok

It seems like it was only months ago that using AI based creation tools required a certain level of geekery and access to powerful backend tools. This rather hypy video about a new Microsoft Design tool in the M365 suite (currently in limited access) shows how quickly this technology has been normalised.

Colin Simpson has worked in education technology, teaching, learning design and academic development in the tertiary sector since 2003 at CIT, ANU, Swinburne and Monash University. He is also one of the leaders of the ASCILITE TELedvisors Network. For more from Colin, follow him on Twitter @gamerlearner

Chief Justice Blow of Tasmania’s Supreme Court addressed a “packed lecture theatre”, U Tas Law School reports (via Twitter, yesterday). Good result for advocates of the UG lecture in the state’s law community who protested the university out of abolishing them (CMM )