NACCQ - Conference 2005

Purpose
This full day workshop follows on from the inaugural BRACELet workshop held at Auckland University of Technology in December 2004. During this workshop an instrument (a set of multi choice and short answer questions) was established. Participants discussed the key ethical considerations and provided the participants with the tools they would need to proceed with the study at their own institutions.
During the NACCQ workshop participants will be evaluating where we are in relation to the study. By July, initial pilot studies will have been run by several of the institutions involved. Participants will be analysing and evaluating the results from these pilot studies. The results will then be employed to further hone the instrument so that participants can undertake the fully fledged study at their respective institutions.
Participants will attempt to place this study in the greater context of the ongoing investigation into the reading and writing skills in novice programmers. A discussion will be held on issues surrounding the next phase of the project extending the study from an instrument for evaluating the program reading skills and the ability to understand existing code in novice programming students towards an instrument that evaluates writing skills.

It is intended that participants will work electronically prior to the workshop, jointly share experiences and while together at the workshop produce a draft report for subsequent refinement and submission to BACIT as a refereed publication and hopefully for subsequent republication in the ACM SIGCSE Bulletin.

Convenors
Dr. Raymond Lister, Jacqueline Whalley, Tony Clear

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Software Development Impact Statements - SoDIS
SoDIS Symposium and SoDIS Workshop

Full Day or half day options

SoDIS Symposium - Half Day - Morning

Purpose
The SoDIS symposium will enable current and prospective participants in this CITRUS sponsored collaborative research programme to meet and share experiences, materials, practices and plans. Industry members, educators from polytechnic and university sectors, local and overseas, and students have all participated in previous symposia. This symposium will demonstrate the latest developments in the SoDIS process and software and is an opportunity for existing members to showcase their work, discuss achievements and projects in progress, and for intending participants to attend and to acquaint themselves with the software, the process and to join in the current projects including research grant funding applications.

Convenors
Professor Don Gotterbarn, Tony Clear, Choon-Tuck Kwan

SoDIS Workshop - Half Day - Afternoon

Purpose
The SoDIS workshop is particularly intended for those unfamiliar with the SoDIS process, who may be interested in learning about it or using it in their teaching. Also, for those symposium attendees already involved in using SoDIS, the workshop will provide an opportunity to trial the latest version of the SoDIS Project Auditor CASE tool.

This hands-on workshop will enable participants to acquaint themselves with the SoDIS process. The SODIS concept will be briefly introduced, followed by an introduction to the tool, which embodies the concept. In a guided process, participants will then work through a particular example that they may use in class. This example is based upon a simulated company that participants will access through a website. Copies of the software will be provided to participants for their own further evaluation and use.

Convenors
Professor Simon Rogerson BSc FBCS FIMIS MIMgt FRSA
Simon is the Director of the Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility and Member of the School of Computing at De Montfort University, Visiting Professor at Charles Sturt University, Australia)

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Half Day Workshops 10.30am - 2.00pm
(morning tea and lunch included)

Tips and Tricks when using a Managed Learning Environment (MLE)

Purpose
To share strategies which minimise tutor workload to ensure the success of an online course. To invite participants to try out a range of strategies that participants will find useful for the following:

Encouraging Student visits to the website

Increasing student learning

Minimising student errors when using the website

Increasing the usability of the website

These will be covered in the form of specific tips and tricks for using Blackboard.

The growth of the use of online learning courses using MLEs has highlighted the time-consuming nature of the administrative and pedagogical tasks involved. We need to encourage students to become active members and contribute to the class, and keep to a weekly structure for study. At the same time we need to minimise our workload by using the automation available to us in the MLEs and to recognise limitations of the MLEs and be aware of opportunities for tips and tricks that can speed up their use.

The tips and tricks to be covered include:

Improving the visual design of the course by:

creating a familiar weekly structure

adding background colours and borders

including inline images

Creating and recycling automatic scheduled announcements

Adding deep-links to announcements

Creating quizzes quickly

Creating and managing reflective diaries using “groups of one”

Ideas for motivational material

This workshop is suitable for any tertiary educator using or wishing to use an MLE. This workshop will be especially useful to users of Blackboard. Requires basic knowledge and understanding of MLE administrative interfaces. Ideally the participants will have their own Blackboard course and have grown frustrated with the limitations of the software.

Convenors
Mae McSporran
Mae McSporran is a senior lecturer in the School of Computing and Information Systems (SCIT) at UNITEC. Mae 's recently completed Masters research addresses the implementation of e-learning in various institutions. She has a responsibility within SCIT for online learning and completed an e-moderation online course with Gilly Salmon in 2004.

Dr Stuart Young
Dr Stuart Young has been instrumental in designing and teaching online courses since 1997 at the University of Edinburgh and Unitec New Zealand. This involves contributions to various aspects of teaching on undergraduate and graduate courses and research on various aspects of online learning. He also undertakes a range of consultancy in Web development. Stuart is currently the webmaster for the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand.

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Introducing WLAN Standards and Technologies

Purpose
Teaching network and LAN administration courses using WLAN technology shares many of the same concepts as cabled based LANs but it extends the concepts of planning the network infrastructure and the implementation of security in unique ways. It also offers new avenues to introduce other networking principles such as bridging, routing, network testing and monitoring.

The workshop will introduce participants to the WLAN technologies and ways to use it to supplement teaching of various networking courses.

This workshop begins with an overview of WLAN standards and technologies followed by practical sessions on setting up WLANs in Ad-Hoc and Infrastructure Modes. It concludes with discussions on using WLANs in teaching network and LAN administration courses.

The workshop is targeted at any person who are unfamiliar with WLANs and want to know more or those who teach networking and may want to introduce WLAN technology into their networking classes.

To introduce WLAN standards and technology through a practical and hands-on session and to provide a better understanding of its uses, benefits and limitations.

Convenors
Stefan Stasiewicz
Stefan Stasiewicz is an Academic Staff Member at BOP Polytechnic and introduced WLANs in 2004 to supplement wired LANs while teaching networking and LAN administration classes.

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“DEMONSTRATING VS.NET 2003” - Console and New GUI controls

Purpose
To provide participants with some experience of VS.NET and how to use it in teaching. In this workshop I will introduce VS.NET 2003. The session has two parts, each oriented towards the teaching of a paper from Dip Level 5:

Using VS.NET Console tool in PP490:
The VS.NET Console is the first programming environment students are exposed to in PP490. The reason was to avoid the GUI distractions when trying to teach fundamental programming concepts. I will demonstrate how to work with VS.NET Console using different data types and IO statements in conjunction with the formatting methods and functions.

Using VS.NET in ID-500 to illustrate the principles of GUI design

The new VS.NET Controls in the Win Form and HTML pages, offer us the opportunity to use these controls to enhance the GUI for Win forms and WebPages in ASP.NET. The controls used in ID-500 for this purpose will be covered in this demo. These are:

Validating controls

CCS (look and Feel)

New windows controls

Developing Non-Rectangular Windows.

The target audience is people who teach introductory programming (e.g. PP490, PP590) and GUI design (e.g. ID-500); the demonstration will also introduce some of using the new .NET tools for people with previous knowledge of VB6.0.

Convenors

Eugene Dawood
Eugene Dawood is a lecturer at Manukau Institute of Technology and teaches GUI design (ID-500) and programming VB.NET (V1 options) and JavaScript (PRs) and ASP.net EC-710.

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Fluency in IT New Zealand (FIT NZ)

A national project supported by the NACCQ executive that involves the ICT industry, tertiary institutions, secondary schools and Government

The aim of this workshop is twofold; to inform the NACCQ membership about this major project, the purpose of which is “To advance partnership between the ICT industry, tertiary institutions, secondary schools & Government to create & deliver a talent pipeline for tomorrow’s ICT workforce, which will enable sectoral growth & growth across the economy” , and to provide an opportunity for participants to contribute to the consultation process.

A number of NACCQ members have been involved in this project from its inception, back in October 2004, when Faye Langdon, AUT’s Business Partnerships Manager, brought a group together representing secondary schools and the various tertiary institutions (Universities, ITPs and PTEs). This was in response to an approach to Faye by the CEO of Cisco NZ, David Barker, who was extremely concerned about a looming ICT skills shortage in NZ and the apparent lack of partnership between the Education Sector, Government & the ICT Industry.

Research by Judy Speight (http://www.higrowth.co.nz/go/to/company?id=34585) highlights a number of significant problems associated with ICT in NZ including;

A significant skills gap between the number of ICT jobs available & qualified applicants

Reported losses of first year ICT students by tertiary institutions as high as 40% in year one

Lack of a secondary school framework for an ICT program of work for years 11-13

No support in New Zealand for an ICT ITO or an equivalent organisation

Participants in this workshop will have the opportunity to contribute to the discussions and to suggest strategies for helping NACCQ to perform a strategic role in achieving the desired outcomes of this project.

Convenors

Garry Roberton, Wintec

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Half Day Workshops 2.00pm - 6.00pm
(Lunch and afternoon tea included)

Curriculum and Quality Workshop

The aims of the Curriculum and Quality Working Group are to:

Promote and support the development, delivery and quality of NACCQ ICT qualifications and ‘local’ qualifications, including degree and graduate diplomas

Provide a co-ordinated approach to supporting the development, maintenance and assessment of ICT unit standards and qualifications on the NQF

This workshop will provide you with an opportunity to participate in a variety of discussions that support the Working Group’s focus on achievement of these aims.

The workshop will include a brief update of the current status of ICT unit standards and of the role NACCQ is taking in the Fluency in IT New Zealand (FIT NZ) project. See separate workshop (morning) on this topic.

The recent (November 2004) publication of the 10th Edition of New Zealand ITP Qualifications in ICT (Bluebook) provides evidence of NACCQ’s commitment to maintaining an up to date set of qualifications that are well suited to those seeking careers in the ICT Industry sector. Moderation of those Bluebook modules remains a key activity for NACCQ.

Several of this edition’s new modules incorporate material that is directly sourced from the Cisco online curriculum and an increasing number of ITPs are choosing to deliver that material. Moderation of these types of modules presents a new challenge and members will have an opportunity to discuss strategy for dealing with those.

This workshop will also give you an opportunity to review the current groupings of modules within the Bluebook in light of the Computing Curricula 2004 groupings presented via ACM in the November 22, 2004 Draft (earlier referred to as the Strawman Draft). Detail of this can be found at:

http://www.acm.org/education/curricula.html#CC2004

Any recommendations that are made as a result of these discussions will be presented at the Curriculum and Quality Forum and then to the conference AGM, as an integral element in the process of ensuring that NACCQ fulfills its role as a national ICT advisory body.

Convenors

Janne Ross, CPIT

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Realising the Dream with SOA

Purpose

To provide participants with some experience of SOA and Mobile Application Programming, so they can gain a better practical understanding of its potential role in courses and student projects.
“Work Anywhere” offers the promise of working where we want, with the device we want and with the applications we want. All too often though, the delivery of the promise is a system that let’s us browse the internet and check our email from a mobile device, and not much more.

For large enterprises, a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) offers the prospect of rapid and agile business process re-engineering while providing a unifying paradigm for wrapping legacy applications. This workshop explores the role of SOA in enabling a rich application experience on mobile devices; mobile devices typically make excellent service consumers.

There will be two sessions in the afternoon. In the first session, the participants will be introduced to the concept of a service oriented architecture and identify the key challenges faced by use of SOA. The participants will explore the “Best Practice” guidelines identified by current practitioners and evangelists and they will develop a design pattern that will allow the progressive implementation of SOA in a controlled and manageable manner.

In the second session, participants will be introduced to the issues of developing software for smart devices and will develop a basic PDA application for the Pocket PC using Microsoft’s DotNet compact framework. A Service Oriented Architecture will be used to allow both connected and disconnected operation with a single programming model.

The workshop will use material from the level 7 Mobile Application Programming course in the Bachelor of Information Systems (BIS) at Manukau Institute of Technology (MIT).

The target audience is people who teach programming at level 6 or 7 or who supervise practical student projects. Some experience of an OO language such as CPP, Java, C# or VB is needed for the hands-on component. Some prior knowledge of DotNet and XML will be beneficial, but is not essential. Attendance at the preceding morning session will provide a useful background for newcomers to DotNet.

Convenors

Mike Lopez
Mike Lopez is a Senior Lecturer, Manukau Institute of Technology and is the designer of the Mobile Application Programming course. He teaches mainly on the BIS programme at MIT and supervises students’ capstone projects. Mike has been programming since 1963 and describes programming as his career, his hobby and his passion. His key research interest is in application architectures.

Jim Cater
Jim Cater is HOD, Computing and Information Technology Department, Manukau Institute of Technology is the author of the PolyTimer timetabling software and will share his experience in adding a service oriented interface to PolyTimer.

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Exploring the Teaching/Postgraduate Study Nexus in Computing: A National Polytechnic Project

Purpose

In this half-day workshop a national research project will be initiated to gain information on the numbers of computing academics who have upgraded or are upgrading their qualifications, and explore the impacts of the considerable number of staff at polytechnics who are teaching as well as upgrading their qualifications. This research project will result in valuable information for policy planning within the NACCQ community and perhaps within the secondary schools as they develop there own computing curriculum.

The research questions to be addressed are:

numbers of staff who had (a) Bachelors (b) Masters (c) PhD when appointed

numbers of staff who have completed (a) Bachelors (b) Masters (c) PhD since being appointed

numbers of staff currently upgrading to (a) Bachelors (b) Masters (c) PhD

At what stage in the process are staff members who are currently upgrading qualifications?

What are the current and future impacts of staff upgrading qualifications both locally and nationally?

What are the completion and progress statistics for staff members currently enrolled in postgraduate qualifications?

What are the implications for staff who are upgrading?

What are the effects on teaching and learning?

What are the implications for each institution?

What are the implications nationally?

Who will benefit/ Intended Audience?

Members of the NACCQ community are invited to participate in this half-day workshop.
Ideally, this project will have at least one representative from each polytechnic participate in the workshop.

Workshop Goal

By the end of the half-day workshop there will be a local coordinator confirmed for each participating polytechnic. Participants will be issued with a workshop pack that outlines a draft research strategy, research questions, ethics approval, data gathering, data analysis and publication requirements. The national research strategy will be finalized during the workshop including a final timeline for the project. A national coordinator will also be appointed. Reporting procedures for this national research project will be in place.

Convenors

Noel Bridgeman, Kay Fielden, School of Computing and IT, Unitec New Zealand

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Yipes, this semester you have to team teach on a subject your knowledge of which is dated: An innovative approach to upskilling quickly

Purpose

There has been a sudden reduction in the number of students attending institutions across New Zealand and Australia. This has resulted in a reduction in staff numbers and redeployment of others. Lecturers have to be versatile and whilst they may have the ‘knowledge’ of course content some staff members may lack recent experience in the field. Reading the text book and studying the PowerPoint slides whilst delivering the course is hardly acceptable. We need to minimise the time that it takes to bring ourselves up to date with course content. Why not realign the course at the same time? Our student audience is flexible therefore we must learn the same skills.

Who will benefit/ Intended Audience?

Learning and teaching has to be more flexible. Our audience is diverse and often studying part time. This new audience demands flexibility of delivery. Educators have to share strategies and innovative ideas to engage the 'Google' generation. If this means providing resources and innovative ideas both on and off campus the blend of delivery has to be tailored to suit.

Sharing strategies for a reduction of lecturer time when preparing to teach a different subject.

To invite participants to offer their strategies and to try out a range of the presenters strategies including the following:

Increasing your own and the students’ interest in the course

Minimising stress whilst absorbing knowledge from a colleague

Negotiating the use by the teaching team of new ways of delivery

Easing the transfer of teaching an unfamiliar course

Increasing student learning whilst realigning the course

These will be covered in the form of discussion of classroom teaching, on online and library resource provision, video recording, i-movie import and editing, audience response technology.

Convenors

Mae McSporran
Mae McSporran is a lecturer in the School of Computing and Information Technology (SCIT) at Unitec New Zealand. Mae 's recently completed Masters research addresses the implementation of e-learning in various institutions. She has a responsibility within SCIT for online learning and completed an e-moderation online course with Gilly Salmon in 2004.