Description: In January Tom completed a MEd in Distance Education studying online in North America (Worthington, 2016). He will discuss the experience of being an international on-line student and the implications for Australian Higher Education. Tom argues that we can expect 80% of university education to be delivered on-line by 2020 and has produced a book on "Digital Teaching" available free on-line, to help get there (Worthington, 2017).

About the Speaker: Tom Worthington is an independent educational technology consultant and an Adjunct Lecturer in Computer Science at the Australian National University (ANU). He is a Certified Professional, Fellow, Past President and Honorary Life Member of the Australian Computer Society (ACS). Tom previously wrote IT policy for the Australian Government. He has a Masters of Education in Distance Education from Athabasca University, a Graduate Certificate in Higher Education from the ANU and a Certificate IV in Training and Assessment from the Canberra Institute of Technology. Tom is author of the book "Digital Teaching in Higher Education", the award winning e-learning course "ICT Sustainability" and blogs as the Higher Education Whisperer.

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Dogfooding, is a term coined by Harrison (2006), for the practice of using the product you are advocating. Teachers need to learn teach on-line by being e-learning students themselves.

After seventeen years working as a computer professional for the Australian Government, I decided to become a private computer consultant in 1999. My job would be short term projects for companies and government agencies, about their computer strategies and policies. This role would involve extended periods of time working alone in my home office.

To give some continuity, I volunteered to help out at local universities and was appointed a Visiting Fellow in what is now the Research School of Computer Science at the Australian National University. In return for a desk and status as academic staff, I helped out with research and teaching. I found myself drawn to the issue of how to use computer technology for the teaching. It seemed obvious that computers and the Internet should be utilized for teaching computer science students, but how and what?

The answer to the what and how came in 2008, when I was asked to design an online course in ICT Sustainability. I was mentored in e-learning design on-line by David Lindley, using an approach adapted from OUUK (Lindley, 2007). The resulting course was run by ACS and I attended on-line instructor meetings with other ACS tutors of the next few years.

In 2011 I took Assessment, Evaluation and Learning EDU5713 and Online Pedagogy in Practice EDU8114, online at USQ, as part of a ANU GCHE.

In 2013 I undertook Recognition of Prior Learning and E-learning for Cert IV T&A at CIT.

From 2013 to 2017 I studied for a Masters of Education in Distance Education on-line at Athabasca University (Canada).

As I wrote in my MEd ePortfolio "I can now make a more credible case for the use of e-learning for international students, having been an international on-line student. Also, I can apply this approach, of leading by example, showing I use the tools and techniques I am advocating others should use."

The DE courses are structured much like those of other "open" universities: 12 weeks grouped in modules of three or four weeks, with three or four major assessment items (some group work) and about 25% assessment for forum contributions. Each course has a cohort of about 25 students at the beginning, with a loss of about 25% of students in the first few weeks. There are one or two instructors. Students are typically mature age teaching staff of colleges, private training providers, and military organizations, mostly in North America or expatriates around the world. Most courses are primarily asynchronous (non-real time), some with a small synchronous component.

The Moodle Learning Management System is used to provide electronic notes to students and for submission of assessment. Paper-based textbooks are proved, supplemented by a reading list of research papers and videos available on-line. Assessment is by traditional written assignments, as well as multimedia materials (such as course modules produced by students), submitted via Moodle.

These are conventional distance education courses, with the advantages and disadvantages of materials designed through a rigorous process and intended to be used unchanged for several years.

My on-line studies were largely of a conventional nature, with course design which would have been familiar to a last century distance education designer. Courses mostly relied on textbooks (paper or electronic), downloaded text-rich notes and readings from academic books and journals. Courses were administered using a Learning Management System (LMS). ANU, USQ, CIT and Athabasca University all use the Moodle LMS. Students had limited interaction by asynchronous Moodle based chat forums. Most major assignments were individual, with some group-work and most material was submitted as a word-processing document. Exceptions were courses on mobile learning and learning technology, which used a greater range of tools and techniques.

The most significant and different learning experience was the last: the Athabasca University MEd capstone portfolio. The Capstone e-portfolio requires the students to reflect on their learning using five artifacts, which usually are a subset of the assignments already submitted in coursework (Hoven, 2015, p. 23). Rather than just leave the student to work this out for themselves, the e-portfolio is structured as a twelve week course in the student's last term (I took this concurrently with my last course). There was an instructor and the student completes the e-portfolio in sections. Students receive feedback from the instructor and provide comment on each others draft e-portfolios. The last task is for the student to present an hour long defense of their e-portfolio: thirty minutes presentation and thirty minutes answering questions from staff and students, via a webinar.

A copy of my Capstone e-portfolio is available. An extended version is available as a book: Digital Teaching In Higher Education: Designing E-learning for International Students of Technology, Innovation and the Environment.