Microsoft Word - conts22-4.doc Australasian Journal of Educational Technology Volume 22, Number 4, 2006 ISSN 1449-3098 (print) 1449-5554 (online) Contents Editorial ................................................................................... iii-viii Assessing technology integration: Its validity and value for classroom practice and teacher accountability ............................ 439-454 Kathleen A. Bowes, Antonia D'Onofrio and Elaine S. Marker ICT integration in schools: Where are we now and what comes next? ................................................................................ 455-473 Colin Baskin and Michelle Williams Implementation of personal response units in very large lecture classes: Student perceptions ............................................ 474-494 John Barnett Online forum discussion interactions as an indicator of student community ..................................................................... 495-510 Shane Dawson ICT integration and teachers’ confidence in using ICT for teaching and learning in Queensland state schools ...................... 511-530 Romina M. Jamieson-Proctor, Paul C. Burnett, Glenn Finger and Glenice Watson Scaffolding learners in authentic problem-based e-learning environments: The Geography Challenge .................................. 531-547 Gwyn Brickell and Jan Herrington Introducing a new learning management system: An institutional case study .............................................................. 548-567 Robyn Benson and Tom Palaskas Anonymity and in class learning: The case for electronic response systems ........................................................................ 568-580 Mark Freeman, Paul Blayney and Paul Ginns © 2006 All rights reserved. No part of this journal may be reprinted or reproduced without permission from the publishers. The Australasian Journal of Educational Technology is a refereed research journal published four times per year by the i i Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 2006, 22(4) Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education (ASCILITE). Members of ASCILITE and ISPI (Vic) receive AJET as a part of their membership benefits. For details on submission of manuscripts, subscriptions and access to the AJET online archives, please see http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ For editorial inquiries, contact the Editor, Associate Professor Catherine McLoughlin, School of Education (ACT), Australian Catholic University, PO Box 256, Dickson ACT 2602, Australia. Email: C.McLoughlin@signadou.acu.edu.au, Tel: +61 2 6209 1100 Fax +61 2 6209 1185. For review process, production matters and subscriptions contact the Production Editor and Business Manager, Dr Roger Atkinson, 5/202 Coode Street, Como WA 6152, Australia. Email: rjatkinson@bigpond.com, Tel: +61 8 9367 1133. AJET is managed by a committee nominated by ASCILITE. Pending 2006 restructuring, the interim AJET Management Committee comprises: Catherine McLoughlin (Editor), Australian Catholic University Roger Atkinson (Production Editor) Carolyn Dowling, Australian Catholic University Mike Keppell, Hong Kong Institute of Education Lori Lockyer, University of Wollongong Appointments pending Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education http://www.ascilite.org.au/ Copyright in individual articles contained in AJET is vested in each of the authors in respect of his or her contributions. Copyright in AJET is vested in ASET (1985-86), AJET Publications (1987-1996), ASET and ASCILITE (1997-2005), and ASCILITE (from 2006). Desktop publishing and HTML by Roger Atkinson. Printed and bound by Pilpel Print, Beaufort Street, Perth WA 6000, Australia. Supporting Societies Supporting societies obtain bulk supplies of printed copies of AJET at the same cost as applicable for ASCILITE members, and access to AJET online articles during the period of restricted access for each issue. Inquiries about supporting society status may be directed to the Production Editor. ISPI Melbourne Chapter http://www.ispimelb.org.au/ Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 2006, 22(4) iii Editorial AJET's new Management Committee We are very pleased to announce the formation of the new Management Committee which will guide and oversee the continuing development of the journal. As foreshadowed in AJET Editorial 22(3) [1], the Committee includes Convenors of previous ASCILITE Conferences, previous Editors of AJET, and Executive nominees. We thank the following for accepting invitations to become the foundation members of the new Committee: • Assoc Prof Geoffrey Crisp, Uni of Adelaide, ASCILITE 2003 Convenor • Dr Mike Keppell, Hong Kong Institute of Education, ASCILITE Exec • Professor Ron Oliver, Edith Cowan University, AJET Editor 1997-2001 • Ms Meg O'Reilly, Southern Cross University, ASCILITE Executive • Dr Rob Phillips, Murdoch University, ASCILITE 2004 Convenor The Committee also includes AJET's Editor, Associate Professor Catherine McLoughlin, and Production Editor, Dr Roger Atkinson. Over time, t h e composition of the Committee will vary, in accordance with rules and procedures that the Committee itself will develop. However, to begin a t the beginning, the rationale for the Committee's initial composition i s based upon making 'integrative links': • Continuity of academic quality of AJET - previous editors of AJET • Links to member interests and other ASCILITE activities - members of the Executive A S C I L I T E 2 0 0 6 - SYD N EY WHO'S LEARNING? WHOSE TECHNOLOGY 3-6 December. http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/sydney06/ iv Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 2006, 22(4) • Links with ASCILITE's conference publishing activities [2] - previous editors of a Conference Proceedings (we regret that 2005 Convenor Halima Goss is unable to serve on the Committee) • Links with day to day operational matters - AJET Editor and Production Editor. Our emphasis upon 'integrative links' is likely to be of high importance in the next few years as we see clearer directions emerging from t h e technological revolution that engulfed scholarly publishing during t h e 1990s. In essence, scholarly publishing, especially traditional academic journals, was given the technological wherewithal to cut out t h e 'middlemen', as personified by traditional commercial publishers. The key factors have been sustained, orders of magnitude reductions in t h e "…cost of information storage, cost of digital network transport, and t h e cost and efficiency of search processes that enable readers to find t h e content they are seeking." [3] However, scholarly societies have reacted to the revolution in different ways. Many societies have outsourced t h e i r journals to a commercial publisher, some have become significant commercial publishers under their own names, and a few, ASCILITE included, have espoused open access. In these circumstances, a strong, integrative linkage with our sponsoring society and our rank and f i l e membership, and a deliberate drawing upon its most experienced academic publishers and editors, is especially important for AJET. 18th International Conference on College Teaching and Learning Exploring Wonder in Learning 2-5 April 2007 Sawgrass Marriott Resort & Spa, Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, USA http://www.teachlearn.org/ Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 2006, 22(4) v AJET's review process: 2006 update Table 1 shows a considerable improvement since our last report on AJET's review process, dated 16 March 2006 and presented in Editorial 22(1) [4]. The improvement is a halving of the 'Number pending', attained in 7 months. From December 2006 we expect to sustain our desired benchmark of three months maximum for AJET's review process. Table 1: Article review outcomes AJET 2003-2006 Year of receipt No. rec'd No. rejected editorially (b) No. reject ext review (b) No. with- drawn (c) No. pending No. accept (d) No. publ- ished % accep- ted (e) 2003 6 1 3 4 1 4 0 0 1 3 2 4 21.3% 2004 9 7 5 1 1 3 2 0 3 1 2 1 32.0% 2005 9 1 4 7 9 5 0 3 0 3 0 33.0% 2006(a) 8 5 4 5 4 0 2 0 1 6 2 9 - a. Data in columns 2-8 is at 31 Oct 2006. We expect to resolve the year 2006 receivals that are pending at 31 Oct by mid-Jan 2007 (our goal is a three month maximum for the review process). The acceptance rate for a year cannot be finalised until after resolving all receivals in the pending category for that year. b. Some of the rejected articles may appear again as receivals in a subsequent year. The reasons for counting these instances as rejections are to enable a clearer cut off for each year's outcomes, and to align data collection with the editorial advice, used in a significant proportion of cases, 'Reject. Invite resubmission of a revised or expanded work for a new review process'. c. Withdrawn means withdrawn at the request of the authors. d. The number of articles accepted from a particular year's receivals does not correspond to the number published in each year, owing to time taken for review and revisions, and fluctuations in the speed of these processes. For example, AJET published 24 articles in 2003, the majority being 2002 receivals. e. % accepted is calculated from column 2 (No. rec'd) and column 7 (No. accepted). Online references In AJET Editorial 17(1) [5] we drew attention to "Editorial work on verifying, correcting and adding URLs…" at the copy editing stage in AJET production. We described this work as "essential", for the following reasons: Whilst the main purpose is to facilitate the reader's access to references cited in AJET articles, extensive use of valid URLs helps to demonstrate and promote the increasing importance of the research journals, conference proceedings and monographs which have espoused Internet based delivery of freely accessible literature. So, how are we doing, nearly six years later? Not especially well, a s Table 2 indicates. The increase in the proportion of reference citations which are supported by a free to the Internet URL has been painfully vi Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 2006, 22(4) modest, from 31% to 35-36%. Also painful, the amount of copy editing work per article for URL addition has not changed. The ratio of "URLs added" (added by the Production Editor during copy editing) to "URLs cited" (cited by the author) has not changed. Copy editing work increased the number of URLs cited by 63% for the 2000-01 sample, and by 64% for the 2006 sample. However, on the positive side, Google [6] and Google Scholar [7] enable substantial reductions in the time required for this part of the copy editing process. OK, so why bother with "URLs added"? W h y not make readers do their own 'Googling'? Table 2: Citations of URLs in AJET articles AJET Vol (issue) No. of articles Total citations URLs cited URLs added URLs % 16(2), 16(3), 17(1) 1 9 4 6 9 8 9 5 6 30.9 22(3) 7 2 8 1 6 7 3 2 35.2 22(4) 8 2 6 1 5 0 4 4 36.0 Here is one explanation, from Google, for the importance of URL citation (or 'linking' to other pages) wherever possible: Links help our crawlers find your site and can give your site greater visibility in our search results. When returning results for a search, Google combines PageRank (our measure of a page's importance) with sophisticated text-matching techniques to display pages that are both important and relevant to each search. Google counts the number of votes a page receives to determine its PageRank, interpreting a link from page A to page B as a vote by page A for page B. [6] [see 8, 9 for additional explanation of PageRank] Editorial addition of URLs, and verification and correction of URLs inserted by authors, is important for an additional reason not cited explicitly in Editorial 17(1) [5]. This is helping to increase an author's "PageRank", especially as revealed by Google Scholar [7] searches of t h e form author:"(name)" (try such searches, using your own name in various formats, e.g. initial surname; firstname surname, etc. Fun!). Idle Moment No. 13: A really venerable online archive The first Idle Moment was recorded in Editorial 19(3), the last in Editorial 22(2) [12], so Idle Moments (like this) are really precious. To set the scene: AJET makes the proud statement "AJET is entirely online! This page provides access to html versions of all articles which h a v e appeared in AJET from 1985" [13]. From 1985, no less. However, in an I d l e Moment, I (RJA) observed that another organisation has a truly massive, unbeatable head start on us and, no doubt, on nearly everyone else [14]: Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 2006, 22(4) vii I checked it out in the usual way, that is look for one's own article, which I did on 2 October 2006. Found it, Proc. R. Soc. Lond. A 1971 [15] and grabbed a copy! The viewing date is significant, being during the Royal Society's three month, promotional launch period of free access to t h e i r "back to 1665" archive. Just as well that I got in quick, because I did not have an electronic copy of my 1971 article, I cannot really afford to purchase access for a single article, and anyway I find "Add to shopping cart" deeply abhorrent. So the R. Soc. may have "back to 1665" on its side, but in my humble view it needs more time to consider the virtues of open access, as made feasible by technological advances and as exemplified by some other, albeit younger, learned societies. Also, my 1971 work is unlikely to feature in Google Scholar [7], because, a s far as I could ascertain from the vintages I checked, the archive contains articles as image files (though the site uses the description "Full Text Available"). That's a downer for modern search engines, which do not do optical character recognition. We must remember to expand "AJET i s entirely online!" by adding "… in fully searchable text!", though to be fair to the R. Soc., titles and abstracts are available as fully searchable, or search engine accessible text. To test the R. Soc. site's search engine, again the usual search for oneself [16]. I'm found [17], along with a good number of namesakes. There was one "Mr. Atkinson, Surgeon in W h i t e - Chappel" who contributed to Philosophical Transactions several times in the 1720s. Mr Atkinson's authoring would need some scrubbing up for our century, because both of his publications are marked "This article does not have an abstract." By the way, in case you are wondering, the McLoughlins have managed only a very recent appearance in the Royal Society. Just two entries, both dated 2006 ☺ Roger Atkinson and Catherine McLoughlin AJET Production Editor and AJET Editor E n d n o t e s 1. Atkinson, R.J. and McLoughlin, C.M. (2006). Editorial. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 22(3), iii-vi. http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet22/editorial22-3.html viii Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 2006, 22(4) 2. ASCILITE Conferences. http://www.ascilite.org.au/index.php/Conferences 3. Atkinson, R. (2004). Technology interactions: Scholarly publishing. HERDSA News, 26(3), 19-21. http://www.users.bigpond.net.au/atkinson- mcbeath/roger/pubs/herdsa-newslet26-3.html 4. Atkinson, R.J. and McLoughlin, C.M. (2006). Editorial. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 22(1), iii-vi. http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet22/editorial22-1.html 5. Atkinson, R. (2001). Editorial. Australian Journal of Educational Technology, 17(1), iii-vi. http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet17/editorial17-1.html 6. Google. http://www.google.com/ 7. Google Scholar. http://scholar.google.com/ 8. Google. How can I create a Google-friendly site? http://www.google.com/ support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=40349&ctx=related [viewed 25 Oct 2006] 9. Google. Google searches more sites more quickly, delivering the most relevant results. [viewed 25 Oct 2006] http://www.google.com/technology/index.html 10. Google. How does Google collect and rank results? [viewed 25 Oct 2006] http://www.google.com/librariancenter/articles/0512_01.html 11. Atkinson, R.J. and McLoughlin, C.M. (2003). Editorial. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 19(3), iii-viii. http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet19/editorial19-3.html 12. Atkinson, R.J. and McLoughlin, C.M. (2006). Editorial. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 22(2), iii-viii. http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet22/editorial22-2.html 13. AJET. http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/about/ajet-arcs-a.html 14. The Royal Society. [viewed 26 Oct 2006] http://www.journals.royalsoc.ac.uk/ 15. Atkinson, R. J., Posner, A. M. & Quirk, J. P. (1971). Kinetics of Heterogeneous Isotopic Exchange Reactions: Derivation of an Elovich Equation. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Mathematical and Physical Sciences, 324, 247-256. 16. Search 26 Oct 2006 for 'atkinson'. http://www.journals.royalsoc.ac.uk/(jdb3 ta55zack4leb4fgko445)/app/home/search-articles-results.asp?referrer=main 17. http://www.journals.royalsoc.ac.uk/(jdb3ta55zack4leb4fgko445)/app/ home/contribution.asp?referrer=parent&backto=searcharticlesresults,42,64; Curtin University of Technology, Perth, 30 Nov - 1 Dec 2006 http://lsn.curtin.edu.au/eac2006/