Introduction
The TELedvisors network is a special interest group operating under the auspices of ASCILITE
(Australasian Society for Computers In Learning In Tertiary Education).
The TEL part of the name stands for Technology Enhanced Learning while “Edvisor” is a name that the network coined as an umbrella term for the wide array of people working in teaching support roles including academic developers, education designers and learning technologists.
The TELedvisors network acts as a community of practice for people working in these roles to support the sharing of knowledge, ideas and resources.
They hold monthly webinars around topics of interest to the community and encourage face-to-face meetups in cities around Australia and New Zealand. They also organise community driven collaborative projects including research and resource development and aim to advocate for greater understanding of the work that they do in the tertiary education sector.
TELedvisors started at the end of 2016 with a core group of around 15 members that had expressed interested in informal conversations at conferences and on Twitter and has grown to 203 members currently.
Action
Colin Simpson, Senior Learning Technologist at Swinburne University of Technology is one of the co-founders and convenors of the TELedvisors network.
Colin was behind the decision to use MoodleCloud as the private online space that the network wanted and needed to be able to collaborate, share resources and showcase work in.
“The decision to use MoodleCloud was at least partially because I was working in a place that used the SaaS product as the enterprise LMS,” commented Colin.
“The network together chose MoodleCloud because we wanted an accessible yet private environment that was easy to use and well supported.”
Once the network organised a MoodleCloud account directly from the website, the members worked on the site design themselves.
Results
“The discussion forums are by far our most widely used tools and the ease of use and relatively intuitive notifications systems mean that these act as a power communications hub for the TELedvisors group,” said Colin.
The network is also using many of the tools to be able to communicate with each other and discuss research, innovation and evidence-based practice in the effective use of educational technologies for learning and teaching in the tertiary sector.
Through their regular use of their MoodleCloud site, the group has also been working on making sure that user experience is enhanced for the members involved.
“I recently had feedback from a new member that they weren’t sure what to do after they had
created an account,” explained Colin.
“It reminded me that we needed to keep a closer eye on this side of the user experience, as Moodlecloud currently has no auto-enrol functionality that would have added the member directly to the course site where our content and activities live.”
More Information
The TELedvisors network welcomes new members working as academic developers,
education designers and learning technologists in educational institutions and organisations
across Australasia. You can join the network at http://teledvisors.net
Supporters and people interested in the network’s activities can connect with on Twitter via
@TELedvisors and everyone is welcome to attend the monthly webinars held at
http://bit.ly/TELedsinar and promoted on Twitter.
ASCILITE acts as a vital hub for people with an interest in the broader issues and ideas
surrounding Technology Enhanced Learning and teaching in Australasia. It supports a
number of other Special Interest Groups around a range of topics and also runs a variety of
other activities for people in the sector. http://ascilite.org/
