Tama’s eLearning Blog

Last week was the Teaching and Learning Forum 2007, held at the University of Western Australia (UWA). The conference theme was Student Engagement, which is a core topic in the coming years for the higher education sector. While there were many interesting (and engaging) papers, I want to draw particular attention to the two fabulous keynote talks, both of which were recorded using Lectopia and are thus available as digital audio and video, either streamed or downloadable.

The first keynote was by UWA’s new Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education), Professor Don Markwell. His keynote was given on his second day at UWA, and also serves, I think, as something of a blueprint for his vision for UWA. The talk was entitled “The Challenge of Student Engagement” and you can either listen to it here, or read the PDF version here.

The other keynote speaker was Professor Owen Hicks, who has been a major player in the higher education sector in Australia for some time. Owen’s talk was a far more personal vision of Student Engagement, but despite – or indeed, because of that – it was engaging in a very direct way (especially in Owen’s talk about his experiences in Timor Leste). The talk was entitled “And you will say “What was all that about?” and I will reply “Well, you tell me,”" and can be heard here.