Forum LAMS Newsletter: Newsletter 96, 28th July, 11

By: James Dalziel

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LAMS Conferences update & Sydney LAMS conference - Dec 9th, 2011

It's been awhile since I sent out a newsletter, but we've been busy with past and future LAMS and Learning Design events.

(1) The 2011 Asia Pacific LAMS and Learning Design conference at NTU in Singapore in May went very well with over 70 attendees. For abstracts and recordings of the presentations, see
http://lams2011.lamsfoundation.org/program.html

My great thanks to Daniel Tan, Choon Teck Ong, Shirlene Tang and everyone else who helped make this such a great conference. For the conference proceedings (including abstracts and papers) see
http://lams2011.lamsfoundation.org/pdfs/2011_LAMS_Proceedings.pdf

(2) The 6th International LAMS and Learning Design Conference will be held in Sydney on December 9th, 2011, with training sessions on the 8th. More details in coming newsletters, but please save the date now. For those who like to combine LAMS with other conferences, ASCILITE is on Dec 4-7th.


Pedagogic Planner and Design Bash events in Oxford, September 29-30th

I'll be in the UK in late September for two back to back Learning Design events - a Pedagogic Planner meeting on the 29th, and a JISC CETIS DesignBash on the 30th. Both events will be held at the Oxford University Computing Service in Oxford.

The Pedagogic Planner meeting will follow the format of previous meetings for discussion of issues in Learning Design and Pedagogic Planners. I'll be facilitating the meeting together with Diana Laurillard and Liz Masterman, and we hope other experts in the field will join us at the meeting. Please email me (james.dalziel@mq.edu.au) to indicate your interest in attending.

The JISC CETIS DesignBash will follow the format of previous DesignBashes, and is being co-ordinated by Sheila MacNeill - keep an eye out on her blog for more details soon - http://blogs.cetis.ac.uk/sheilamacneill/


Possible LAMS Conference/meeting in Oxford on 28th Sep? Feedback sought

As I'll be in Oxford for the events on the 29th and 30th of September, I am wondering if it is worth organising something focussed on LAMS on the 28th? As we've already had a LAMS Conference in Singapore this year, I'm comfortable to just be part of the other two events. However, if LAMS users and researchers are keen to get together, then this date is open for an event. I can see three options:
(1) Do nothing on the 28th - but meet up at the 29th and 30th events. This is the default option.
(2) Have a small conference/meeting of LAMS users and researchers - perhaps in the style of an "unConference" for general discussion and catching up on LAMS. This could be the whole day or just the afternoon. While we could include some short formal presentations for those who would need to present in order to attend, I imagine a small group in a single room with the main focus on discussion.
(3) Have a full LAMS conference like past years.

So I'm keen to hear feedback from European LAMS users and researchers about an event on 28th - please email me (james.dalziel@mq.edu.au). I'm happy to co-ordinate something if there is sufficient interest, but otherwise will just go with the 29th and 30th events.


ALTC National Teaching Fellowship on Learning Design

In June I was very fortunate to receive an Australian Learning and Teaching Council National Teaching Fellowship to work on "Success Factors for Implementing Learning Design". This Fellowship allows me to take a year to investigate Learning Design adoption issues in depth, including a visit to Europe in Sep/Oct to catch up with Learning Design colleagues.

I'll also be hosting a two day discussion with Learning Design experts on current and future challenges in Sydney after the LAMS Conference (Dec 12th and 13th). If you have a particular focus on Learning Design and would be interested to join me in Sydney in December, please email me.

I'll provide more details on the Fellowship in my newsletters over the coming year.


LAMS and Moodle 2 update

Work on integration of LAMS and Moodle 2 continues - for discussion, see
http://www.lamscommunity.org/dotlrn/clubs/technicalcommunity/forums/message-view?message_id=1144248

If you'd like to get a demonstration account to try out the integration, see
http://moodle.lamscommunity.org/moodle2/

We've recently added a new feature that can show an image of a sequence (taken from authoring) to students and teachers prior to entering the sequence - for examples, see
http://www.lamscommunity.org/dotlrn/clubs/technicalcommunity/forums/message-view?message_id=1267405


NPS wins Platnimum LearnX Award using LAMS

The National Prescribing Service of Australia (NPS) recently won a Platinum Award in the Bespoke Learning Solution category of the LearnX Asia Pacific 2011 Awards for E-learning and Training - well done! The award was for the "NPS: Better Choices, Better Health" courses which are based on LAMS.


New LAMS Book and upcoming TEwT Special Edition on LAMS for 2012

Chris Alexander has produced the second LAMS and Learning Design edited book, with over 220 pages based on an excellent selection of recent LAMS Conference articles - for details about the new book (and the earlier one), see
http://www.tewtjournal.org/lamsandlearningdesign.htm

Chris has also let me know informally that another Special Edition of TEwT is planned for 2012 on LAMS and Learning Design - more details in the next newsletter.


LAMS Community update

We've recently passed 7,000 members of the LAMS Community, and the sequence repository continues to grow, now with over 50 Greek sequences from Spyros Papadakis and colleagues!

Stats as of: July 28, 2011
Users: 7061
Number of Sequences: 868
Sequences downloaded: 15031 times
Sequences Previewed: 14112 times
Forum Postings: 7081
Translations to: 30 languages
Number of translators: 112

Posted by James Dalziel