Making IT Happen: Enhancing Teaching and Professional Collaboration via the Internet

Abstract

This paper was first presented at the 35th Annual Conference of the Australian Psychological Society, The Brain Games, 2000, in Symposium 15, Team spirit: Collaborative projects in the teaching of psychology, jointly sponsored by Pearson Education Australia and UniServe Science. The focus is on using the Internet and Information Technology (IT) to enhance: • teaching and learning; and • collaboration with colleagues in professional contexts. The "Year 2000" was marked by ideas inspired by the "New Millennium" and Olympic symbols in Australia. "Beyond 2000" has a cyber-connection in contemporary imagination. The learning curve with IT and e-learning is incredibly steep; with change built into "being connected". Elearning goes together with e-teaching, e-professional development and e-collaboration. The computer has invaded centre-space in my working environment and its many communication tools have radically altered the way I teach and relate to colleagues and students. Concepts of time and space are more in keeping with the "Global Village" as geographically remote locations no longer exclude us from professional opportunities and debates. Ron Oliver's Keynote Presentation at ASCILITE (Australasian Society for Computers In Learning In Tertiary Education) 2000 captured the essence of teaching and learning excellence where the intent and the design are based on contructivist learning principles - with or without IT. Leading educational psychologists advocate understanding human development and cognition as prerequisites for designing instruction and assessment in teaching and learning (Gardner 1996; Perkins 1995; Sternberg and Zhang 2001; Woolfolk 2001).