Provide: eBooks, discussion forums, tools for inquiry and assessment.

Pictographs by Carlos Sarmento from the Noun Project (CC BY 3.0 US).

In studying education, I have read many theories and techniques for distance education. Designing an online course is much the same as face-to-face. However, there is not the time or resources to teach all of this to the tutors and lecturers who do the teaching at universities. Something simpler and quicker to teach, understand and implement is needed.

The cover of my book "Digital Teaching" is illustrated with the four pictographs by Carlos Sarmento (from the Noun Project CC BY 3.0 US). This summarizes an approach with four steps:

1. Provide eBooks and other curated content on the topic;
2. Facilitate discussion between the students;
3. Teach tools and techniques for the student to explore the topic; and
4. Assess, including formative feedback, to help them learn.

The instructor can get away with making up a face-to-face course as they go along, but an online course needs to be carefully designed and tested in advance.

Keep in mind that what students like is not necessarily the same as what helps them learn, or what they will use. Offered the option of face-to-face lectures, students will say they want them, but most will then not turn up. Students prefer high-quality videos, but video quality makes no difference to learning.

Five years of online study made me appreciate the value of classroom teaching. The typical university student still want to meet face-to-face with other students and an instructor. However, this time should not be wasted on lectures, or tutorials, where the student sits passively.

The Australian National University (ANU) found that after the first two weeks only 30% of students attend a typical lecture. In a semester, that works out to less than 50% attendance.

ANU demolished the central Manning Clark Centre lecture theaters in late 2017, to be replaced by "a number of multi-purpose, multimodal, flexible learning spaces which will be embedded with new digital infrastructure".

No preferred learning approach has been set centrally by ANU. However, I suggest replacing lectures with a flipped classroom, will provide a better learning experience while halving the teaching space required. A typical "on-campus" student can be expected to be in "class" for no more than 10% of their study time. For a full-time student studying 40 hours a week, this would be 4 hours. A full-time student might spend as little as one day per week on campus, a part-time student, one day a month.

Online students are more focused on individual courses and assessment tasks. This is due to their being physically remote from the university. The student does not perceive the "university" as more than an administrative entity. Also, online students are more likely to be older, part-time and undertaking studies for work purposes. As a result, these students are focused on completing the assessment. The result is isolated, unhappy students.

The solution is activities to introduce the students to the online services the university provides and getting the students to help each other. These have to be compulsory, formal, assessed, for-credit activities. It is not enough to have optional extra-curricular activities, as the task-driven online student will not do these. It is also not enough to have one introductory activity, as the student will revert to their previous isolated behavior.

Educational designers who know how to produce such activities for students. The challenge is to convince discipline specific academics to make room in degree programs for these "soft skills".

While the problem with engagement has been seen with distance education students, the use of blended learning on-campus will see the increase in the same problem. The same techniques can be used to help engage these students.

With this approach, the soft-skill activities wrap around the classroom time, much as the new glass and steel of the Irving K Barber Learning Centre, wraps around an old stone building at the University of British Colombia.

Desktop software used for e-learning, such as the Australian Moodle free open source learning management system, has been upgraded to operate on mobile devices, including smart phones. Two interfaces are provided: an App for mobile devices and a responsive web design. The responsive design automatically adjusts the interface when displayed on a mobile device (see video "Demonstrating Responsive Web Design"). The responsive web design can also be used on a large screen for a conventional lecture, or in a flexible classroom.

This still requires the educational designer to consider the context of where the learner is. The mobile interface is useful for presenting small amounts of information and asking for a short response. However, the student is unlikely to be able to write a 4,000 word essay, while sitting on a bus. Even so it removes the need to produce two, or three versions of course materials.

• Artifact 5: Mobile learning and Distance Education, from MEd ePortfolio, Tom Worthington, 2017
• Mobile Learning, from Digital Teaching In Higher Education, Tom Worthington, 2017

M-learning can be over shorter periods and targeted at specific skills. The New Zealand government is recognizing micro-credentials from tertiary education organizations as of 22 August 2018. The NZ credentials can be the equivalent of 1 to 8 weeks study. The shortest qualification typically issued by Australian universities is a 12 week graduate certificate.

As an example, one approach would be to design a teaching qualification for computer professionals consisting of the equivalent of 3 weeks study. This could be made up of 3 one week micro-credentials, the equivalent of a one semester, one quarter full time load, graduate certificate course. Students could undertake the three micro-credentials separately, or as part of a graduate certificate, graduate diploma, or masters degree.

See:

New Zealand Qualifications Authority, Recognising micro-credentials in New Zealand. URL https://www.nzqa.govt.nz/about-us/consultations-and- reviews/recognising-micro-credentials/

Training Tech Professionals to Teach: Parts 1 to 10

Life long learning and micro-credentials will result in worker having several hundred qualifications. This would be unmanageable with paper certificates and even with web based e-certificates, such as those issued by "My eQuals" in Australia (the image shows my Graduate Certificate in Higher Education, issued by ANU). Employers will want to be able to automatically check qualifications against job requirements. One technology which may be used is block-chain. There is an ACS Blockchain technical committee looking at this, as one use for the technology.

See:

Higher Ed Services, Welcome to My eQuals. URL https://www.myequals.edu.au/participants/

A. Grech, & A. F. Camilleri, Blockchain in education, 2017. URL https://www.pedocs.de/volltexte/2018/15013/pdf/Grech_Camilleri_2017 _Blockchain_in_Education.pdf#page=68

A preview of this presentation was given under the title "Mobile Learning from Canberra with Microcredentials and Blockchain for the Indo-Pacific: Colombo Plan 2.0" at the Australian Computer Society Canberra Branch Conference, 1:15 pm, 4 September 2018, in Canberra (replacing the "Security" presentation listed in the program).

Version 1.1, 11 September 2018, Tom Worthington.

Computer Professionals Providing Mobile Learning for the Digital Economy by Tom Worthington is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.