On the 8th September
2015 I headed to the University of Manchester to attend the 3 days of
conference and fun at ALT-C (The Association of Learning Technologists
Conference).
It brings together Learning
Technologists, academics and all those interested in the use of technology to
support and enhance learning and teaching. This post sums some of my most memorable
parts.
I had made a point of meeting up
with friends and old work colleagues Hayley and James. We have all moved on to
new institutions but keep in touch sharing experiences and ideas, ALT-C
provides the perfect opportunity to do this face to face.
The conference always starts with
the challenge of which sessions to go. This year I had read through eh
programme and had an idea of what might be good but as the 3 days go on the
list always changes. The only think that was a definite fixture in the 3 days
was the treasure hunt on day 2. I first met Hayley doing a treasure hunt at the
University of Leeds using AR and knew that there was no way we would miss out
on doing another one. Another feature of the conference this year was the ALT_C
game which ran across the 3 days and introduced the attendees to the idea of
gamification. There was stickers awarded for arriving at a session first,
talking to suppliers and completing a wide range of activities. The delegates
were split into 4 coloured teams to compete to take on the EvilBot. The game
finished with the winning team taking on Evilbot on the last day of the
conference.
As with previous conferences there
was a big social media presence, it is always good to see what is going on in parallel
sessions and bookmark shared papers for reading later.
The conference started with a
keynote from Steve Wheeler about the changes in technology and how we use it.
He also brought 2 of his students to talk about their experiences. I think it
is always important to hear student feedback direct from them but also to
engage them in the conversation. Faceless surveys gather data but they often
miss the human element and as many are anonymised it is hard to follow up
specific comments or suggestions.
As I moved through sessions on Day
1 I learnt about how different staff have used technologies in their university
and the research they have done into the impact of them. Firstly was Chris
Gillies talking about the comparisons, barriers and enablers of BYOD and institutionally
supplied devices. This work is really
useful as we think about how we support staff and students to use devices
within Leeds Beckett. The first day ended with the gala dinner. As part of the
ALT-C game we had ‘craft’ activities on the tables to make hats and decorate
them. My table took to this task with great enthusiasm.
The keynote delivered by Jonathan
Worth on day 2 was enlightening and thought provoking, well worth a watch if you spare the time. Day 2 highlight
was charging around and completing the treasure hunt. It was good to learn
about a new website by using and engaging it. The site called ActionBound was
really easy to use and with the demonstration of setting up looked like
something work investigating further to add interest to induction activities
and maybe add some fun to staff development sessions. I also went to sessions about the value of
lecture capture, it was a great session to be in to talk and discuss the value
of lecture capture and why it is useful.
The final day saw the ALT-C game
end and the Evilbot defeated (it ended with a piñata style robot). The game was
good and brought a thread to the whole event.
This is just a very brief summary
of the some of the things I saw and heard. There is a huge amount of information available from the event and I will be going back to them in the future to
support and guide my thinking about the use of technologies in learning and
teaching. Here is the link
for all the resources.
