Speakers and Special Guests

Chris Betcher has been a teacher since 1985 but a learner since 1963. He currently works with teachers and students to help them understand how technology and the web is changing the way we all learn. He spends lots of time on the web, enjoys dabbling with digital media and likes to make interesting things out of 0s and 1s - Source: sydney.gafesummit.com

Distributed Classroom - Concepts and First Experiences

The "Distributed Classroom" signifies face-to-face teaching in classes (with typically 12 to 30 students), where the teaching person and the majority of the students are present in the classroom and the remaining students attend the class using their PCs, laptops and an internet connection.

The documentation of the SWITCH-AAA funded project "Didactics and Technology for the Distributed Classroom" presents the didactical and technical foundations of the distributed classroom, compares the preparation and implementation of selected didactical scenarios in the conventional and the distributed classroom, and describes different options for the required technical equipment (including a short comparison of the web conferencing systems Adobe Connect to the open source software BigBlueButton).

Computer Science Hands-On. Via Distance Education.

Massey University (Te Kunenga ki Purehuroa) is one of New Zealand's largest universities, with approximately 35,000 students, 17,000 of whom are extramural (distance education). Massey employs about 3,000 academics in three physical locations in Palmerston North, Wellington and Albany (Auckland). Massey offers several undergraduate and postgraduate information technology related degrees, including the Bachelor of Information Science in Computer Science, Information Technology and Software Engineering. Delivering this program extramurally is challenging, and has to address issues like

• fair assessment of different student cohorts including internal and extramural students
• tutoring extramural students
• delivering lectures (and not only lecture notes) to extramural students
• addressing the competition by free massive open online courses (Coursera, Stanford, etc)
• making money in an environment where public universities are underfunded

I will discuss these issues and the solutions we have developed in this presentation.

Leena Kloppers

Georgina Avard

Helvi Wheeler

Dr. Martina Reitmaier

Dorothea Westhofen

Dr. Kauna Mufeti

Prof. Dr. Manfred Meyer

M.Sc. André Nitze

Operi Murangi