MUSEUM EDUCATION IGITAL CONTENT XCHANGE - … · Version 1.0: Final 3/07/09 1 Executive summary...

Commercial in Confidence

© Curriculum Corporation 2009

MUSEUM & EDUCATION DIGITAL CONTENT EXCHANGE

Final Report

VERSION: 1.0

DATE: TUESDAY, 14 JULY 2009

DOCUMENT: TLF_MEDCE_REPORT_V1‐0 FINAL.DOC

Acknowledgements

Many people have been instrumental in allowing this project to be completed. We would especially like to thank the following:

The Council of Australasian Museum Directors

Staff of the participating museums – Museum Victoria; National Museum of Australia; Powerhouse Museum

The advisors from the Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development and the South Australian Department of Education and Children’s Services

Participating teachers and students, and their principals, from:

o Aldgate Primary School, South Australia

o Black Rock Primary School, Victoria

o Cheltenham Secondary College, Victoria

o Corpus Christi School, Tasmania

o Hampton Primary School, Victoria

o McKinnon Secondary College, Victoria

o Mt Nelson Primary School, Tasmania

o Oatlands District High School, Tasmania

o Sandringham East Primary School, Victoria

o Sandringham Primary School, Victoria

o Smithfield Plains High School, South Australia

o St David's Parish School, South Australia

o St Patrick's Primary School, New South Wales

o St Therese's Primary School, New South Wales

o Tasmanian Online Learning Network, Tasmania

The project’s Education Reference Group, comprised of educators from South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria and New Zealand

The Le@rning Federation’s Contact Liaison Officers

The lead researcher and writer, Robert Baker.

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Contents

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ............................................................................................. 1

Procurement ............................................................................................................ 1 Quality assurance ..................................................................................................... 2 Online collaborative environment ............................................................................ 2 Testing the model in schools .................................................................................... 3 Online curriculum content ........................................................................................ 3 Learning design ........................................................................................................ 4 Learning experience ................................................................................................. 4 Evaluation of learning outcomes .............................................................................. 5 The online learning environment ............................................................................. 5 Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 6

INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................... 7

Background to the project ........................................................................................ 7 Education and ICT policy context .................................................................................... 8 Web technologies and online learning ........................................................................... 8 Partners ................................................................................................................... 9 Curriculum Corporation .................................................................................................. 9 Council of Museum Directors of Australia ...................................................................... 9 Education jurisdictions and sectors .............................................................................. 10 Participants ............................................................................................................ 10 Vision and aims ...................................................................................................... 11 Strategic context ........................................................................................................... 11 Project objectives .......................................................................................................... 11 Project timeline ...................................................................................................... 12

THE PROJECT PROCESSES AND SYSTEMS ........................................................ 13

This section outlines the new model for procurement, quality assurance, and the publication of content within an online learning environment.

Procurement .......................................................................................................... 13 The museums’ role in the process ................................................................................ 14 Systems ....................................................................................................................... 19 Quality assurance ................................................................................................... 22 Quality assurance process ............................................................................................. 22 Trialling the MEX system ............................................................................................... 22 What is educational quality? ......................................................................................... 23 Schools Online Thesaurus ............................................................................................. 25 Managing intellectual property..................................................................................... 25 Metadata exchange ....................................................................................................... 27 Access and engagement within delivery systems .................................................... 28 Scootle publishing environment ................................................................................... 28 Online collaborative learning environment used in the Trial ....................................... 28

TESTING THE MODEL IN SCHOOLS ...................................................................... 30

Before determining whether the model used in the project was sustainable and scalable, a school‐based trial was established to test the educational value of the resources and the effectiveness of the online environment.

Scope ..................................................................................................................... 30 Key questions ................................................................................................................ 30

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Methodology ......................................................................................................... 31 School selection ............................................................................................................ 31 Preliminary Workshop................................................................................................... 31 Data collection tools ...................................................................................................... 31 Networks of engagement .............................................................................................. 32 Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 33

WHAT THE CASE STUDIES TELL US ..................................................................... 34

This section of the report summarises and analyses data relating to five key themes within the School Trial: curriculum content, learning design, the learning experience, evaluation of learning outcomes, and the online learning environment.

This is contextualised with background information about the schools and classes that participated in the Trial.

The schools ............................................................................................................ 34 Schools’ use of ICT .................................................................................................. 35 Policies and protocols ................................................................................................... 35 Facilities ....................................................................................................................... 35 Teacher capability and experience ............................................................................... 36 Classes ................................................................................................................... 36 Classroom organisation ................................................................................................. 37 Use of computers in the Trial ........................................................................................ 37 Curriculum content ................................................................................................ 39 Selection of content by teachers .................................................................................. 39 Curriculum focus ........................................................................................................... 40 Selection and description of resources by museums .................................................... 41 Access to content .......................................................................................................... 43 Exemplars for the use of curriculum resources ............................................................ 43 Learning design ...................................................................................................... 44 Pedagogical frameworks ............................................................................................... 44 Teaching and learning strategies .................................................................................. 49 Opportunities ................................................................................................................ 51 The learning experience ......................................................................................... 53 Participation and time spent ......................................................................................... 53 Online collaboration ...................................................................................................... 54 Learner engagement ..................................................................................................... 55 Learning outcomes ........................................................................................................ 58 Evaluation of learning outcomes ............................................................................ 59 Assessment of learning within the Trial ........................................................................ 59 Formative and summative assessment ......................................................................... 59 Peer assessment ............................................................................................................ 60 Online assessment tools ............................................................................................... 60 The online learning environment ........................................................................... 63 Perceptions of the online environment ........................................................................ 63 The collaborative workspace ........................................................................................ 64 Perceptions of the interactive and collaborative features ........................................... 67 Opportunities ................................................................................................................ 69 Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 70

DISCUSSION ............................................................................................................. 71

Procurement .......................................................................................................... 71 Content selection and the National Curriculum ........................................................... 71 Resource formats .......................................................................................................... 72

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Access to museum websites ......................................................................................... 72 The resource and its descriptive metadata ................................................................... 72 Provision of metadata ................................................................................................... 73 Systems ....................................................................................................................... 73 Quality assurance ................................................................................................... 74 Quality of metadata ...................................................................................................... 74 Intellectual property ..................................................................................................... 75 Distribution and the online environment ............................................................... 75 Online curriculum content ............................................................................................ 76 Learning design ............................................................................................................. 76 Online learning experience ........................................................................................... 77 Evaluation of learning outcomes .................................................................................. 78 Online learning environment ........................................................................................ 78 Recommendations ................................................................................................. 79

APPENDIX 1 CASE STUDIES .................................................................................. 82

School A ................................................................................................................. 84 School B ................................................................................................................. 86 School C ................................................................................................................. 88 School D ................................................................................................................. 90 School E ................................................................................................................. 92 School F ................................................................................................................. 94 School G ................................................................................................................. 96 School H ................................................................................................................. 98 School I ................................................................................................................. 100 School J ................................................................................................................. 102 School K ................................................................................................................ 104 School L ................................................................................................................. 106 School M ............................................................................................................... 109

APPENDIX 2 MODELS OF COLLABORATIVE ACTIVITY .................................... 111

Model 1 – ‘How to have fun!’ ................................................................................ 111 Model 2 – ‘Who do they think we are?’ ................................................................. 113 Model 3 – ‘Aboriginal visual stories’ ...................................................................... 115

APPENDIX 3 DIGITAL RESOURCES AND LEARNING OBJECTS USED IN THE SCHOOL TRIAL ............................................................................................. 116

APPENDIX 4 GLOSSARY ....................................................................................... 118

APPENDIX 5 REFERENCES .................................................................................. 121

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Executive summary

Background

The Museum and Education Digital Content Exchange was a project conducted in 2008–09, endorsed by the Council of Australasian Museum Directors (CAMD) and involving participation from the Le@rning Federation (TLF) and three museums: Museum Victoria (MV), the National Museum of Australia (NMA) and Powerhouse Museum (PM).

The project comprised the following components:

Procurement: the scoping and testing of new and efficient means of sourcing digital resources from the museum sector for Australian and New Zealand schools, and procuring metadata related to those resources using a metadata harvester

Quality assurance: implementing a quality assurance process that explored efficiencies in reviewing the metadata created by the museums and enhancing that metadata to suit the end users, that is, students and teachers

Collaborative online environment: testing the efficacy of the new procurement and quality assurance model in an online learning delivery platform. This platform was developed to promote ‘skills in areas such as social interaction, cross disciplinary thinking and the use of digital media’ (MCEETYA 2008A). It incorporated specific Web 2.0 technologies judged to be relevant to collaborative online learning

School Trials: schools from New South Wales, South Australia, Tasmania and Victoria were invited to participate in a School Trial over a one‐month period. Teachers would search for, select and embed digital resources in online collaborative learning activities that they then made available to their students. The Trial aimed to test the value of the museum‐provided digital resources, as well as the effectiveness of the online collaborative learning platform, for teaching and learning.

Procurement The procurement model used in the project involved museums providing metadata records to TLF using agreed protocols, and the digitised resources remaining on the museums’ websites. This is in contrast to TLF’s previous practice of distributing digital resources, along with the metadata, to the schools sector. The metadata records (title, description and educational value statement) were harvested by the Metadata Harvester, and then TLF completed a simplified quality assurance process.

The museum participants and TLF had agreed on minimum standards and transfer protocols, the selection of resources, editorial guidelines and level of quality in relation to the metadata.

When selecting resources, museums relied upon curriculum advice from TLF. This advice was informed by work to date on developing common curriculum outcomes. Selection of resources was also influenced by factors such as perceptions within the museum of which resources were educationally relevant; which resources were digitised and in some cases already described by (some) metadata; and which resources were free of intellectual property (IP) constraints. Museums selected from a range of resources from their collections (eg photographs, paintings, cartoons, audio files, video files, manuscripts) that were digitised


or suitable for digitisation. By the conclusion of the project, 643 digital resources had been made available for the School Trial.

Each museum embarked on a quality control (QC) process that suited its context and was an adaptation of existing knowledge management processes. The following three distinct approaches were adopted prior to transferring the metadata to TLF:

1. Drawing on existing curator notes to write new metadata for an education audience

2. Adapting and editing existing metadata records

3. Automated mapping of existing metadata fields (ie statement of significance, historical notes) to an education metadata field.

It was agreed that the participating museums were responsible for creating the resource metadata to a customised version of the ANZ‐LOM metadata specification. In many cases, this involved museum teams adapting and rewriting existing metadata to more effectively meet the needs of a school audience and the requirements of TLF’s Metadata Harvester. New metadata elements that had to be created included the educational value statement (or some aspect of educational context or significance) as well as the inclusion of terms using the Schools Online Thesaurus (ScOT).

Quality assurance The Quality assurance (QA) process carried out within the project involved a shorter version of the normal educational soundness review conducted within TLF. This process included reviews of metadata, educational soundness, Indigenous content and IP according to agreed specifications. The primary focus of the QA process was to ensure that the digital resource met the requirements of teachers and students: namely, that it was relevant to their needs and that its description enabled teachers and students to find and use it. This was especially important as the writing process was generally initiated by museum staff without expertise in schools education.

Despite the revised and shortened QA process, it was resource intensive. The quality and quantity of metadata harvested by TLF varied greatly from provider to provider and even from item to item within any one museum.

The QA process raised a number of issues relating to the quality of the metadata. These included: integrity of information; style and language; extraneous information or insufficient information. Technical and IP‐related issues also emerged.

Intellectual Property management of digital museums’ collections is complex and ongoing. Museums may possess the physical item in their collections but not necessarily have permission to display the item as a digital resource. The identification of third‐party rights was an onerous responsibility for the museums, given the short time frame of the project. It was decided to investigate Creative Commons licences for both text and images for use in further collaborations between cultural organisations and the schools sector.

Online collaborative environment For the purposes of the project, the metadata records, including the link to the digital resources on the museum websites, were published in an online environment developed by TLF.

The online environment, known as Scootle Sandbox and adapted from Scootle, allowed teachers participating in the Trial to create and manage collaborative learning activities using the digital resources they had selected. These activities were designed to facilitate a


dynamic learning environment for students that would support interaction, collaboration, cross‐disciplinary thinking and the use of digital media.

Testing the model in schools A four‐week School Trial was designed to test the educational value of the digital resources selected and described by the museums, as well as the effectiveness of the online environment developed by TLF, particularly its collaborative features.

A research project was developed to take place in selected schools in March and April 2009. The methodology for the research project included selection of a valid sample of schools, and the development of research tools to gather quantitative and qualitative data from school leaders, teachers and students.

The Trial involved the selection of 15 Catholic and government primary and secondary schools from four states: New South Wales, South Australia, Tasmania and Victoria. Schools in the Trial had enrolments of between 101 and over 1,000 students. Rural and regional schools were represented in the Trial, and a distance learning network involving a number of schools participated.

The teachers and classes taking part in the Trial varied greatly in the extent to which they had previously used learning objects and digital resources for teaching and learning.

Online curriculum content Teachers in the Trial were asked to create one or more collaborative activities for students based on topics relevant to their state curriculum and their students’ learning abilities and needs. Having chosen the topic, teachers selected digital resources from the online environment that could be sequenced within the collaborative activity. Collaborative activities were predominantly developed within the learning areas of the Arts, English, Humanities (including History) and Social Sciences. Other collaborative activities focused on information and communication technologies (ICT) and Personal Learning.

The digital resources made available through the procurement and QA process were restricted in number and format due to the short time frame for the project delivery, and teachers were permitted to include items from the pool of existing TLF learning objects and digital resources. Taking this into account, 60 per cent of the digital resources included in collaborative learning activities by the teachers were drawn from the resources provided by the museums. This was sufficient to allow researchers to investigate whether the digital resources and the descriptions provided by the museums were of educational value.

The number of museum‐provided digital resources included in a collaborative learning activity was dependent on factors such as the topic selected and the quality of metadata (ScOT terms, keywords, spatial and temporal data). Due to the limited range of the 643 resources the museums provided, not every topic chosen by teachers could be accommodated within the Trial.

Teachers and students accessed the selected digital resources from the museums’ websites. In a number of cases this occurred outside school hours, for example when teachers were planning their collaborative learning activities. Hence, museums were responsible for ensuring that the digital resources were available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and this was generally the case.

Research identified that over 79 per cent of teachers found the digital resources provided by the museums to be suitable for teaching and learning. The resources were judged to be easily viewed and relevant to the curriculum. Over 90 per cent of teachers endorsed the


descriptive metadata that accompanied the resources (the description and educational value statement) as accurate most of the time.

The model used in the project meant that students read the associated text when they accessed the museum’s website to view the digital resource. While the text style minimised technical terms, it was not targeted at a student audience. Some years 3 and 4 students in the Trial clearly had difficulties with the educational value statement’s readability. This raises questions about what information should be confined to a teacher view of the digital resource, both within TLF web pages and the web pages of the museums displaying the digital resources.

Learning design Teachers were asked to design their own teaching and learning activities for the online collaborative environment. It was anticipated that the online environment would facilitate a range of pedagogical strategies in the areas of cognitive development, catering for multiple intelligences and the use of problem or inquiry‐based learning. Given the diverse range of prior experience in developing and using online learning within the group of Trial teachers, the collaborative learning activities they developed ranged from requiring student recall to drawing on higher‐level learning styles. At least three collaborative activities developed by the teachers could potentially be used as models in future professional development.

On reflection the more experienced teachers indicated that with more time they would have used higher‐level learning strategies such as project or inquiry‐based learning, independent research and greater use of collaboration to cater more effectively for different learning styles. Some teachers, including less experienced teachers, recommended the provision of models, advice and professional development to support the planning of teaching and learning strategies within any future use of online collaborative learning environments.

Learning experience For thirty‐four per cent of the students who participated in a collaborative learning activity, the activity took between one and three hours. These hours were spread over a number of lessons and days. For over 60 per cent of the students, the collaborative activity took between three hours and over seven hours. Some students were so engaged that they accessed the activity from home and completed further work.

Management of, and participation in, an online collaborative learning environment required the development of a new skill set for teachers and students. Where students were unfamiliar with the use of particular collaborative tools such as instant chat or were using them for the first time in a school environment, the technology was sometimes disruptive to the learning. Once the novelty had worn off and the use of the collaborative tools was confined to the activities, teachers and students were highly positive about the potential of the online environment for collaborative learning.

Some elements of the collaborative learning experience particularly stood out: students sometimes allocated tasks to each other while taking into account their individual strengths and weaknesses, and most students stated that they had assisted or received assistance from other students to understand and complete a task. This occurred across classes and age levels when students from more than one class or level engaged with the same collaborative learning activity at the same time.

Few teachers in the sample created explicit opportunities within the learning design for students to collaborate in pairs or groups to resolve issues or make decisions. Where these


were provided, such explicit indications were useful and could be included in sample collaborative activities for professional development purposes in the future.

The learning outcomes achieved by students in the Trial were highly dependent on the teacher’s design of tasks in the learning activity, as well as the teacher’s capacity to manage online student learning. In a number of instances teachers in the Trial lacked the time or capacity to challenge students by setting complex tasks. In these instances, students felt that they were merely requested to write responses to basic questions about a digital resource, and this may have reflected the usual practice within these classes. Most teachers in the Trial were able to develop learning activities with diverse and challenging learning outcomes. A small number of activities have been selected that can be used as exemplars for learning design purposes.

Learner engagement was fundamental to a successful learning experience. On a 6‐point scale ranging from ‘not engaged’ to ‘very engaged’, 100 per cent of teachers believed that their students were engaged in the online learning, while 85 per cent of students concurred.

Evaluation of learning outcomes A feature of the online collaborative learning environment used in the Trial was its capacity to cater for a number of different assessment strategies. These ranged from peer assessment to teacher use of formative and summative assessment.

Peer assessment was most apparent in the student comments on each other’s contribution to the ‘live workspace’, in which students engaged with the digital resources and the related tasks developed by the teacher. Teacher encouragement of peer assessment was not a feature of the learning design of the collaborative learning activities, yet some teachers noted at the conclusion of the Trial that they would use it in future if given the opportunity.

Specific assessment tools were provided within the online learning environment: an activity log where teachers could monitor student modifications and additions to the live workspace, and group and individual feedback tools. Teachers did not use these tools extensively, which may be due to the tools not being demonstrated at the Preliminary Workshop, or to time constraints in the Trial. A number of teachers who used the toolset provided very specific feedback about possible improvements.

The online learning environment International research (Crook et al 2008) indicates that the communication and collaboration made possible by the use of Web 2.0 technologies can improve educational outcomes in the areas of inquiry, literacies, collaboration and publication.

The online collaborative learning platform developed by TLF was an adaptation of the Scootle publishing environment. It included Web 2.0‐type tools for students that would develop skills in areas such as social interaction, cross‐disciplinary thinking and the use of digital media. The platform encompassed an interactive live workspace that included chat, basic and advanced search, a timeline, map and feedback facility. This workspace enabled students to collaboratively develop and publish wikis, write comments, upload files and use ‘chat’ to discuss digital resources, concepts and ideas.

Positive responses within teacher and student surveys quantified that the online learning environment provided was engaging (80 per cent of teachers and students), assisted collaboration (79 per cent of teachers and 84 per cent of students), was effective (79 per cent of teachers and 87 per cent of students), stimulated learning (79 per cent of teachers and 77 per cent of students), assisted students to achieve learning outcomes (72 per cent of teachers and 81 per cent of students) and was easy to use (80 per cent of teachers and 89


per cent of students). Within these responses, 73 per cent of teachers ‘strongly agreed’ that the online learning environment was engaging. Teachers were less certain that the environment helped students to achieve learning outcomes or that it had an easy‐to‐use interface. Students, though, were much more certain that the interface helped them to work collaboratively and was easy to use.

The experience of teachers in the Trial suggests the need to provide an online collaborative learning platform that takes account of the differing capabilities of teachers. This might involve developing online learning environments that teachers can customise by including fewer or more interactive and or collaborative features, or enabling them to select from a range of online learning environments.

Responses to and use of the Web 2.0‐type tools was highly dependent on whether teachers encouraged use of the tools within the learning design of the collaborative learning activity. Some of the tools, such as the map and timeline tools, were compromised by the absence of spatial and temporal metadata. Other tools, such as the feedback tools, were insufficiently identified and promoted during the Trial. Of the teachers involved in the Trial, 100 per cent were positive about the capacity of the live workspace to promote quality online learning. Even the chat tool within the live workspace was positively endorsed by 72 per cent of teachers. Students positively endorsed the live workspace (87 per cent), the chat tool (83 per cent) and the feedback tools (87 per cent).

The toolset that TLF provided to teachers and students in the Trial was a preliminary set of Web 2.0 tools. There is potential to include additional tools in future versions of the online environment.

Conclusion When asked to reflect on the value of working collaboratively as they did in the Trial, 82 per cent of students gave it a rating greater than 7 out of 10 points. Only eight per cent of students were negative towards this way of working. Similarly, over 92 per cent of teachers believed that the online learning environment and its collaborative tools assisted student learning.

Given this strong endorsement it is possible to identify a set of recommendations that will improve the use by teachers and students of digital resources, the online learning environment and its collaborative toolset. Recommendations are grouped under the major headings of this report: procurement; quality assurance; curriculum content; learning design; the learning experience; evaluation of learning outcomes; and the online learning environment. Issues are summarised in the ‘Discussion’ section of this report.


Introduction This report outlines the findings of a joint project between the Le@rning Federation and the Council of Australasian Museum Directors (CAMD) from March 2008 to May 2009.

The Museum and Education Digital Content Exchange (M&EDCE) project (hereinafter ‘the project’) was established in 2008 to investigate efficiencies in selecting, quality assuring and distributing digital curriculum resources from museums to teachers and students in an online collaborative learning environment. It is anticipated the project will form the basis for more responsive processes and systems for acquiring quality digital curriculum resources from the collections sector (museums, art museums, libraries and archives) to support the implementation of the National Curriculum and other school sector initiatives.

Background to the project TLF is an initiative of the Australian Government, state and territory governments and the Government of New Zealand and is managed by Curriculum Corporation (CC). TLF has worked successfully with the collections sector on a project and policy level since 2005. Projects have been completed with 26 cultural and public organisations to identify, license and describe in curriculum terms over 5,500 digital items from these institutions’ collections. These items have been published through TLF repository, called the Exchange, and distributed to schools via jurisdictional and other repositories. Curriculum Corporation has also worked with the Collections Council of Australia (CCA), providing advice on the requirements of education during the Collections Council of Australia’s drafting of the Australian Framework and Action Plan for Digital Heritage Collections (2007).

On reviewing these projects, both Curriculum Corporation and participating museums recognised the benefits of improved efficiencies in the digitisation of items and the distribution of digitised items from collections for use in teaching and learning. Achieving these efficiencies required further work to define common specifications and processes for digital content. In addition, in 2006 the Collections Council of Australia had suggested that ‘a national approach to digital cultural content will help to reveal objects, ideas and information that are at present essentially hidden from Australian and international users’ (CCA 2008, p 14).

At its meeting in February 2007, CAMD agreed to establish a collaborative process across the museum sector to further standardise specifications for digital content. At the CAMD August meeting, Curriculum Corporation proposed a project to forge stronger links between the education and museums sectors. CAMD endorsed the project, which consisted of two workshops and a school trial. The workshops would involve representatives of the museum and schools sector, and the trial would investigate specifications and processes to improve efficiencies for digitising and distributing content from museum collections.

The initial workshop was held in November 2007. Its findings were distributed to the participants and formed the scope of the project. The second workshop consisted of key museum and Curriculum Corporation staff, who met to define the project brief and schedule.

In parallel with these discussions with the cultural sector, in 2008 Curriculum Corporation developed a portal to provide access to TLF digital curriculum resources for teachers and students who did not have ready access. This portal, called Scootle, formed the base platform for the School Trial and included collaboration tools for teachers and students.


The project was planned to address questions across the full process, from procurement and quality assurance through to the experience of end users. This report outlines the findings of this project.

Education and ICT policy context

TLF is nearing the end of an eight‐year funding cycle, and it is now poised to respond ‘to the emerging needs of teachers and students in the implementation of new national curriculum requirements, learning challenges, and technological possibilities over the next decade and beyond’ (TLF 2008, p 3). This response takes account of the Australian Government’s commitment to a National Curriculum and to the Digital Education Revolution.

The National Curriculum will apply from Kindergarten to Year 12 and is expected to be in place by 2010, starting with the learning areas of English, Mathematics, the Sciences and History. The second phase of work will be developed in the Arts, Languages and Geography.

The Digital Education Revolution aims to underpin these curriculum changes through the use of information and communication technologies (ICT). One aspect of this is the allocation of resources over two years to supply students and teachers across Australia with online curriculum tools and resources to support the National Curriculum.

In 2008, a joint ministerial statement on ICT for 2008–11 stated that ‘Australia will have technology enriched learning environments that enable students to achieve high quality learning outcomes and productively contribute to our society and economy’ (MCEETYA 2008A). The statement goes on to say that educators will have access to ‘digital repositories of resources that are affordable, reusable, discoverable and shareable’ and that ‘learners are active participants in knowledge creation and will engage with state of the art tools which enable new forms of learning, collaboration, innovation and communication’ (MCEETYA 2008A).

The Digital Education Revolution supports the ministerial statement through funding initiatives that include:

the procurement of digital curriculum resources that align with the National Curriculum and meet agreed quality and technical standards

access to high quality learning resources from digital repositories, schools and academic institutions, and cultural and scientific organisations

the development of policies, protocols, infrastructure and standards required to enable schools to safely and seamlessly communicate, collaborate on, access and use resources across school, system and jurisdictional boundaries.

(Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations 2008)

This project took account of this policy context by investigating the impact of online collaborative tools and quality digital resources on teaching and learning. Teachers were able to create learning activities that would enable students to use digital resources and online tools to research, create and collaborate. Agreed technical specifications and formats for the digital resources allowed teachers and students to access the online collections of multiple museums within the one online learning environment. Teachers would have the opportunity to share the pedagogical strategies they used to exploit the online environment.

Web technologies and online learning

In 2008 the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) produced a report about online participation in Australia. It noted that among the 14 to 17‐year‐olds who had been surveyed, all had used the internet and that ‘92 per cent were heavy or medium users’


(ACMA 2009). This level of participation needs to be considered in the context of the number of students in Australia and overseas who are actively and proficiently using emerging web technologies, including Web 2.0, to communicate, collaborate and interact.

A report produced for Becta in 2008 considered the potential of Web 2.0 technologies for learning, and identified opportunities, challenges and tensions for the education sector. The report outlined the origins of Web 2.0 and its impact. It argued that:

At the same time, the affordances of Web 2.0 seem to harmonise well with modern thinking about educational practice. In particular, they promise learners new opportunities to be independent in their study and research. They encourage a wider range of expressive capability. They facilitate more collaborative ways of working and they furnish a setting for learner achievements to attract an authentic audience. (Crook, C et al 2008, p 5)

The same report notes that ‘while there has been a groundswell of enthusiasm for adopting Web 2.0 practices in education, there is little evidence that uptake is happening to any significant degree’. It goes on to argue that ‘there remains very little research activity guiding the effective application of these new tools and practices’ (Crook et al 2008, p 5).

The M&EDCE project was timely in that it was able to respond to the joint statement on ICT, the agenda of the Digital Education Revolution and the need for primary research data about the uptake and use of Web 2.0 technologies within the school sector.

Partners The project brought together the museum sector represented and endorsed by CAMD, education jurisdictions and Curriculum Corporation.

Curriculum Corporation

Curriculum Corporation is an independent education support organisation established by the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA), to assist education systems in the improvement of student learning outcomes. Owned by all Australian Ministers of Education, Curriculum Corporation reports to a Board comprising the directors‐general (or representatives thereof) of each education system, the Catholic and independent education sectors, the New Zealand Ministry of Education and the peak national teacher and parent bodies. Curriculum Corporation manages TLF.

Council of Museum Directors of Australia

The Council of Australasian Museum Directors brings together the leaders of the major national, state and regional museums in Australia and New Zealand. Established in 1967, it is an independent, non‐governmental organisation that:

considers national strategic directions for major museums

encourages the development of national standards

facilitates collaboration in research, exhibitions and education

represents the interests of major museums to government and other stakeholders

provides a forum for the sharing of information and ideas among members

works to promote the social, educational, scientific, cultural and economic benefits of the museum domain to the community.


The 21 museums within CAMD operate in over 67 locations across Australia and New Zealand and include natural science and social history museums, industry and technology collections, science centres, combined museum and art galleries, heritage houses and outdoor museum sites. They work across disciplines in the arts, sciences and humanities and engage in formal partnerships and collaborations with a wide variety of government and non‐government agencies and academies.

Education jurisdictions and sectors

While all education jurisdictions and sectors are represented on the Curriculum Corporation Board, an advisory panel was established for the purposes of this project. This consisted of representatives from the Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development and from the South Australian Department of Education and Children’s Services. An Education Reference Group was also established, comprising educators from South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria and New Zealand.

Participants The participants in the project are those organisations and individuals that actively trialled the new procurement, production and delivery processes and systems. They included TLF and the three museums.

TLF has produced over 8,800 items of digital curriculum content that are delivered to each educational jurisdiction, and made freely available to all schools and teachers throughout Australia and New Zealand. The initiative continues to produce innovative online content for students from years K/P to Year 12 across the key learning areas, using Australian contexts for the broad technology profiles found in Australian schools. It has also been integral in establishing standards for online curriculum content in the areas of educational soundness, metadata and accessibility.

Museum Victoria is responsible for the State of Victoria’s scientific and cultural collections, providing public access through three museums. It also oversees a wide range of research programs and the continued development of the state’s collections, and runs major education and research‐based websites. It is responsible for more than 16 million individual items contained within three collections – Sciences, Indigenous Cultures, and History & Technology.

The National Museum of Australia explores the land, nation and people of Australia. The museum celebrates Australian social history in a unique way by revealing the stories of ordinary and extraordinary Australians, promoting the exploration of knowledge and ideas, and providing a dynamic forum for discussion and reflection. This core collection of more than 200,000 objects represents Australia’s history and cultural heritage.

The Powerhouse Museum is located in Sydney, and has a unique and diverse collection of 385,000 objects that span history, science, technology, design, industry, decorative arts, music, transport and space exploration. The museum presents 22 permanent exhibitions and temporary exhibitions, complemented by more than 250 interactives.

The school communities (the teachers, students and school leaders) participating in the project are drawn from the government and Catholic sectors. The sample selected for the School Trial includes primary and secondary schools in New South Wales, South Australia, Tasmania and Victoria.


Vision and aims The project vision was to model a responsive process to source educationally relevant digital content from the museum cultural domain for use by the education sector. The project aimed to provide and evaluate a system whereby digital resources and their accompanying metadata record are relevant, responsive, scalable, sustainable and accessible.

Strategic context

This project was developed in the context of the following strategic objectives:

provide ongoing quality digital content for Australian and New Zealand schools to support the priorities of MCEETYA and the Digital Education Revolution

strengthen linkages between the museum cultural domain and the education sector in relation to digital content in a context of collaboration across New Zealand and Australia

align processes and specifications for the digitisation of content to enhance interoperability and IP management between the two sectors

leverage existing infrastructure to further streamline the provision of quality digital curriculum content made available to schools

describe and align, where relevant, business requirements of each sector in sustaining an ongoing provision of digital content

establish processes that can respond to a changing education environment

build on the considerable investment by Australian governments in supporting digitisation and provision of online content for education.

Project objectives

To achieve the vision and aims of the project, participants agreed on an operating proof‐of‐concept as a basis for meeting the following objectives:

provide better access to museum collections for education audiences

demonstrate the meaning of ‘quality’ in an online education environment

determine whether museum content provided in an online collaborative environment enhances teaching and learning

understand if there are more efficient ways of developing and facilitating access to digital collections

agree to cross‐sector standards and transfer protocols for sharing metadata.


Project timeline The following timeline was developed at the outset of the project. It includes the new model for procurement, quality assurance, and the publication of content using Scootle Sandbox. It also takes account of the School Trial, which was designed to test the effectiveness or usefulness of the model. This report is the final part of that evaluation.

Table 1: Project timeline

Stage Activity Dates

1 Project documentation Mar 2008 – Jul 2008

2 Systems development Jul 2008 – Jan 2009

3 Content selection and procurement; quality assurance Sep 2008 – Feb 2009

4 School Trial preparation Aug 2008 – Jan 2009

5 Conducting of School Trial Mar – Apr 2009

6 Final report and project completion Jun 2009


The project processes and systems To address the objectives above, the project tested the full supply‐chain process, including:

selection of objects from museum collections

use of a metadata harvester to source metadata records direct from museums

enhancement of that metadata to suit the education audience

distribution of these digital resources within a collaborative learning environment to test access and engagement with teachers and their students.

The ensuing systems and processes together demonstrated a working model for a collaborative approach to:

system interoperability

processes

metadata standards

the use of the controlled vocabulary Schools Online Thesaurus (ScOT)

IP management

Web 2.0 tools for teachers and students

a feedback loop for museums.

For the purposes of this report, these systems and processes are organised under the

following headings:

Procurement – role of museums and TLF in selection and metadata transfer

Quality assurance – TLF process of adding value

Access + engagement – the online collaborative and TLF publishing environment (Scootle Sandbox)

Procurement Setting up the proof‐of‐concept required that resources be procured by both museum participants and TLF through new processes and systems.

The procurement process involved selection of items relevant to the schools’ curriculums; quality control (QC); and the provision of metadata to TLF.

The digital resource comprised:

the digitised object (ie still image, sound file, moving image). This resides on the museum website


the metadata record. This undergoes a museum‐based QC process before TLF harvests it and ‘adds value’ as part of a quality assurance process.

TLF was responsible for implementing the technical system for transferring museum data into a repository ready for editing and distribution.

The first stage of the project involved dialogue about aspects of the procurement process, with a particular focus on standards and protocols, and selection of objects according to curriculum‐based criteria. In the absence of a defined National Curriculum, the criteria were based on the information published by the National Curriculum Board and the agreed National Statements of Learning. TLF provided training in editorial guidelines and writing metadata. These discussions and training sessions assisted the museums to develop a shared understanding about the types of items that might be useful in a classroom as well as the minimum quality of metadata required.

The new procurement process included the transfer of metadata records, in contrast to the previously used model for acquiring digital resources from museums. The actual object was not transmitted, and remained on the museum’s website. The process involved a consideration of capabilities in knowledge management, standards, IP and technical requirements.

The museums’ role in the process

The participating museums were each exploring how to increase the exposure of their collection to schools in less resource‐intensive ways. Each was at a different stage of readiness but with similar technical infrastructure in place. A key to the success of metadata transfer was to determine how best to accomplish the project aims, while working with existing museum processes and legacy systems.

Selection of items, checking and improving the quality of their metadata records and the transfer of those records were the major elements of the procurement process. The process raised opportunities for the museums to identify practices that in future they could address earlier in the acquisition and digitisation process.

Item selection

For item selection, TLF provided advice to museums about the significance of topics and themes that aligned with developments in the National Curriculum and Statements of Learning. The selection process used by each museum differed. Following project kick‐off meetings, museum staff engaged in discussions with TLF about what might constitute appropriate, educationally relevant content for this project. Museums then assessed their own collections, identifying content that had educational value and high‐quality descriptive metadata, and that could meet the conditions of use.

The National Museum of Australia drew on objects that were already richly described and embedded in themes or narratives through curatorial work on exhibitions or on collections highlights. The museum focused on highlights from its collection (iconic objects, Papunya paintings and political cartoons) that all had strong links to the curriculum. TLF had already identified Indigenous material and contemporary political cartoons as gaps in its existing resource pool. The team from the museum noted that: ‘The education audience was a critical factor in content selection’. The team believed that there were some difficulties with ‘objects where copyright was unclear or difficult to obtain’ or those where TLF already had similar or large amounts of digital content. They had no difficulty finding objects that they believed had ‘a strong fit to the curriculum’.


Museum Victoria initially found the process of selecting objects to be circular: curatorial staff wanted to know what TLF needed in order to make a selection, but TLF wanted to know what was on offer. Museum Victoria’s response is typical of many institutions that prefer clear guidelines on topics and curriculum areas to focus the selection process.

The items selected were then reduced in number through consultation with TLF and museum staff. Interestingly, the curators who selected the items were not present at these meetings to explain why the objects were selected. TLF believes their presence would assist the knowledge exchange in the selection process. Throughout this process discussion revolved around how to best select or aggregate bulk content – whether grouping or ‘theming’ content would be an appropriate mechanism from which TLF could then hand‐pick a smaller selection of relevant content.

At Powerhouse Museum, staff chose an initial list of items on the basis of what was already available (ie digitised, copyright cleared) and relatively complete in terms of metadata. This was then categorised into themes. The museum made 100 objects available to TLF as part of a content review and a technical test before the selection meeting with curators, and asked for TLF feedback on their suitability. According to museum staff: ‘This focused the selection meeting on our objects and gave the museum a good feel for what would be suitable’.

Following this meeting, curators set up a spreadsheet listing subject areas recommended by TLF: Australian History General, Technology & Design, War, Convicts, Children, Indigenous, Computing & Mathematics, Gold, Civics & Citizenship, Health & Body, Other Cultures, Geography, Transport, Modernism, Arts, Advertising, and History of Science.

The selection meeting subsequently focused on examples from this list. Museum staff noted: ‘As the objects were reviewed in more detail by both registration and curatorial [staff], consideration was given to whether the record contained an interesting story or demonstrated a process (eg the design process). Records excluded at this stage were those that had insufficient documentation or those that were solely technical in nature (eg this vase demonstrates a particular glaze). This process …[was] … time consuming and given the time constraints was somewhat arbitrary,.. [but ] .. it is still a very useful process for the museum to undertake’.

Quality control for metadata

Knowledge management practices played an integral role in this exercise, and each of the three museums incorporated into its overall work practices a QC process for providing metadata.

Quality reviews of metadata records all occurred prior to sharing the records with TLF. Museums checked the metadata records of appropriate items to ensure that they contained:

an adequate number of fields (ie more than just a title and description)

accurate and interesting information.

The National Museum of Australia was already undertaking a database ‘clean‐up’, Museum Victoria was in the process of preparing 10,000 items to be ‘web ready’, and Powerhouse Museum was exploring ways to repurpose its digital collection for different online audiences.

The National Museum of Australia’s process for data clean‐up was primarily handled by its database team, which was sorting out key metadata problems in the collection relating to titles, descriptions and dates for objects. In addition, this project required creating new database fields to cater for education requirements and the quality and existence of


appropriate statements of significance that could be repurposed for educational value statements was variable. Many of the educational value statements had to be written using other sources of information such as exhibition and catalogue text or, in the case of the political cartoons, created from scratch.

Curators handled all final approvals of text, and museum educators determined suitability of objects for the curriculum and managed internal stakeholders and TLF relationship. Within this project, museum educators also wrote all the metadata (eg educational value statements, titles), with curators providing quality checks and fact checking.

For Museum Victoria, the process involved providing data from its existing collection management system. Two dedicated project officers were employed to discover content for TLF and to write additional text, such as a purpose‐written description and the educational value statement. The object records selected were ones that had already been flagged for data enhancement as part of preparation for publishing the collection on the web.

Curatorial staff at Museum Victoria provided the background and reference material that could be used by the project officers to construct the metadata, including the description and educational value statement. Curatorial staff were also involved in the selection of objects to be published, as well as proofing the accompanying text, and undertook a second round of approvals once the text and record were in final draft format and had been published on an internal staging server. In this instance, the museum education staff were not involved in the QC process.

Museum staff noted that determining ‘educational value’ was challenging, as objects are not acquired into the State Collection for Victoria based on their possible educational value, but are collected for their historical value or other significance. Museum Victoria commented on the conceptual difficulties required to provide an educational value statement: ‘it implies that the statement will refer to curriculum or pedagogy. In fact, the statement is a cross between what museums understand as a significance statement and a description of the object. This is an important distinction because it leads to who is best qualified to write such a statement. As discussed previously, the curators’ knowledge about the selected items is critical for the composition of the education value statement but the style assumes knowledge in curriculum.

At Powerhouse Museum, curatorial staff checked the long‐form prose record for each item, and registration staff checked the basic descriptive, temporal and spatial data.

Museum staff initially envisaged that existing metadata descriptions for the objects they had selected would not be changed from what was already publicly available on the museum’s website, given that staff believed their data was generally of a reasonable quality and length. The first step in the process was for registration staff to choose a list of potential objects, selecting those considered to be of reasonable quality and posing minimal copyright issues. Curators then chose 2,000 objects from this set.

The Web Unit then organised data transmission. According to staff, ‘this slowed the process considerably and resulted in all the object records being re‐examined and in many cases rewritten by curators. This corrected many errors but also greatly reduced the museum’s capacity to supply large volumes of content quickly’. (Supplying a large number of items was part of the brief, and a way of testing the effectiveness of the system.)

In general, the museums tagged items with keywords quite effectively, but questioned the value of using another thesaurus such as the Schools Online Thesaurus (ScOT). Subsequently TLF quality assured, and where necessary provided supplementary ScOT terms for the harvested metadata.


In the initial selection of items from the museums’ collections, IP acted as a constraint. For example, the requirement that metadata descriptions could not contain quotes from primary sources or references meant that many items were excluded from the selection process. Often this was not noticed until quite late in the process, following much initial effort.

Standards for harvesting metadata

The metadata (title, description, education value, keywords, spatial and temporal data) was to be provided by the museums, providing links back to the object on museum websites. The metadata was harvested via RSS feeds through TLF Metadata Harvester. Conversations were held with each of the museums to agree on transfer protocols and standards, keeping in mind existing expertise, resourcing, systems and the potential for future scalability.

There was shared understanding, knowledge exchange and expertise around the need for these standards and protocols. Standards are important because they:

provide a solid foundation upon which to develop new technologies that facilitate automatic data transfer

provide opportunities to share and enhance existing practices

enable content from a diverse range of cultural organisations to be accessed by a variety of systems and end‐users

improve automation, communication and innovation.

For museums, sector wide decisions about standards affect the processes used for acquisition, digitisation and access to collections.

Discussions about appropriate standards and protocols were particularly important for this project as, in contrast to previous TLF projects, only metadata was harvested; the actual object remains on the museum websites. A ‘pointer’ URI provides a link back to this content for end users. For interoperability purposes, agreed standards were a key requirement, allowing metadata to be transferred, edited, and then publishable and accessible by a variety of end user systems.

The Agreed Transfer Protocols were defined as RSS 2.0 via OpenSearch or OAI PMH (Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting), while in the future Atom Syndication Format (Atom 2.0) will be facilitated. The metadata profile was determined as ANZ‐LOM, which is an interpretation of IEEE LOM. There was much discussion about mapping from Dublin Core or Dublin Core Extended as the preferred profile, as it is a current museum standard. Twenty‐eight metadata fields were deemed mandatory, and included Dublin Core, LOM and ISO‐controlled vocabularies.

It was difficult for all parties to make choices about the most appropriate standards and specific metadata fields. In referring to the RSS feed, the National Museum of Australia suggested that ‘what we ended up with appears to be something which could be easily implemented across the cultural sector’. However, the museum partners are not completely ‘sold’ on the technical solution, and believe that the technical model still needs to be refined.

There was also discussion about the potential for linking to Natural Science objects through mapping Darwin Core, but it was determined that the two schemas were too different. Darwin Core is rich with elements that do not have easy equivalence with ANZ‐LOM elements and the resulting data loss would be excessive.


Museums found the ANZ‐LOM schema difficult to apply to a museum context. The schema also required quite a specialised knowledge set. Museum Victoria reflected that the ‘use of the ANZ‐LOM schema presented considerable difficulties for the museum as staff found it extremely difficult to interpret and use for describing cultural or scientific collection objects’.

Museum Victoria agreed to publish a Dublin Core dataset for its items, a standard that is widely used in the museum, library and art gallery sector for publishing data about objects. However, staff found the mapping from Dublin Core to ANZ‐LOM challenging, and the process resulted in data losses. The mapping exercise ‘clumped a number of different data elements together and did not provide enough nuance to allow us to adequately describe our collection items. We would recommend that a very simplified schema for ANZ‐LOM/DC elements be published with only those elements [listed] that museums can actually provide’.

Museum Victoria identified the following metadata fields as being problematic for mapping from Dublin Core to ANZ‐LOM:

Country codes – ‘The requirement to use ISO country codes instead of names meant that data had to be excluded for some records. Historical collections contain historical names (eg Persia, Mesopotamia or Sumer); something that the ANZ‐LOM was not flexible enough to accommodate.’

Temporal coverage interoperability (ie dates) – ‘Historical collections often do not have accurate dates. We will never be able to know on what day an ancient Roman coin was minted. ANZ‐LOM required Day/Month/Year or Month/Year but could not accommodate simply year or circa dates. These data were simply excluded. Temporal coverage (ie dates) also needs a qualifier.

Temporal coverage choice ‐ There may be any number of dates (eg date the object was made, used, found). These are all useful pieces of data but need a qualifier to be interpretable.’

The Contributors element in ANZ‐LOM – ‘[this] allows for roles such as “author” or “publisher” but does not account for roles like “maker”, “user”, or “collector”.’

Although TLF acknowledges that meeting the metadata requirements is a complex area of expertise, the importance of using a standard vocabulary that is machine readable can not be underestimated. As an example of new developments to help with this process, the MARC (Library of Congress) relators are now part of Dublin Core, which allows different types of contributors to be distinguished and translates directly across to the ANZ‐LOM schema.

The ANZ‐LOM schema supports the W3C‐DTF standard, which allows broad year level dates through to more granular representations. The above issue raised by the museum may have been due to an early technical issue in MEX that was subsequently rectified. More substantial than the data transfer issues was the choice of temporal coverage, ie: date created, discovered, used and produced.

Each of the museums opted to provide an RSS feed to TLF, rather than set up a harvest or other system. Museum Victoria recommended that:

the RSS feed provide an XML output built to comply with ANZ‐LOM

a template or DTD be written for the XML output so that the data rather than the semantics of the XML can be evaluated

a mechanism be written that would allow the feed to be parsed programmatically to reduce minor syntactical errors that cause the feed to fail to import


a clear, non‐technical schema for the data be written and a clear, non‐technical template for the data be provided

case and other formatting requirements for the XML be clearly described.

According to Powerhouse Museum, ‘The original plan to use DC‐Extended over RSS was ideally suited to our technical set‐up and the change to ANZ‐LOM complicated this. However, now we have ANZ‐LOM, it is very easy for us to supply more data … (assuming that there is adequate resourcing for selection and processing of items and associated metadata)’.

Systems

One of TLF’s 2007–08 deliverables was a central registry and metadata repository to enable jurisdictions to provide discovery mechanisms to schools.

A central registry and metadata repository would enable education jurisdictions to share teaching and learning resources and provide enhanced discovery mechanisms for their teachers. This registry would enable improved access to and utilisation of distributed digital content.

Consequently, three smaller projects within the main project included:

the metadata registry and harvester system (Metadata Exchange, or MEX)

the Sharing Exchange (SHEX)

the Identifier and Access Services (also known as Appropriate Copy Services).

The metadata registry and harvester system (MEX) makes online content available from cultural institutions and third‐party vendors. For the purposes of this project, MEX harvested metadata records from the three museums. These records were stored in a central repository and TLF added educational metadata to them as part of the QA process. These edited metadata records were then distributed to the user environment via a content distribution web service (ie LORAX).

The Sharing Exchange primarily provides jurisdictions with central infrastructure to distribute quality‐assured shared content. The Identifier and Access Services allow uniform linking of TLF content across the jurisdictions.

Metadata harvesting

The metadata registry and harvester system (MEX) is a repository that harvests and distributes metadata from other repositories, in this case from the cultural sector. It also harvests metadata from jurisdictions, and the Vocational Education and Training (VET) sector, for distribution to the school sector.

This is a new channel for content discovery that affords teachers and students access to quality‐assured educational material hosted by reputable sources. The system acts as a repository for museum metadata, and also as the interface for TLF QA process. The principles behind the development of MEX include accessibility, useability, interoperability, flexibility, durability and scalability.

The functional requirements for the metadata registry and harvester system are grouped into three main categories:

Content procurement


Content management and discovery

Content distribution.

Figure 1: An individual MEX record, displaying each of the fields available for viewing and editing

The Metadata Exchange acts as a repository for the metadata of all objects procured from each museum. Figure 1 above shows the content management features, in particular the metadata fields, for a specific record. Figure 2 below shows the same record within the publishing environment (Scootle Sandbox), which is how it was discovered and viewed by end users (teachers and students). This view also shows how students used the link to navigate to the actual record residing on the museum’s website.


Figure 2: The record as it is viewed in Scootle Sandbox and on a museum website


Quality assurance

Quality assurance process

The traditional TLF process for quality assurance (QA) has been developed and refined over five years. For the purposes of this project a shortened version was developed that would incorporate the key elements and rigor of the traditional process, without requiring the same length of time.

This QA process was designed to check that resources were adequately described for the school sector, ensuring that:

factual errors were minimised

subjective interpretation was minimised

language was accessible and appropriate for the intended audience

content was relevant, accurate and discoverable.

TLF determined that this revised and shortened process would still meet quality expectations without undue risk, and this was supported by the research on the experiences of end users (see the section on ‘What the case studies tell us’ in this report).

The revised QA process commenced the moment metadata was harvested from the museums. Items were batched together and assigned to a workflow for processing. The revised process maintained the pivotal checkpoints across each of the work areas (ie education, editorial, metadata, IP).

Table 2: Revised TLF QA process

Stage

1 Metadata harvesting

2 Educational soundness review

3 Educational soundness check

4 Indigenous content check

5 Metadata check (ScOT terms, keywords, temporal data, spatial data)

6 Editorial check

7 IP audit

8 Editorial sign‐off

9 Approval and sign‐off

10 Go live (ie publish)

11 Scootle check

At the outset a number of assumptions were made about the anticipated quality of metadata, and these influenced the way the workflow was established. To minimise risk, these assumptions were tested as the QA process unfolded. For example, TLF initially believed that it would not be required to conduct fact checking. However, some factual inconsistencies were detected early on, consequentially, fact checking was reintroduced as part of the simplified educational soundness review stage.

Trialling the MEX system

TLF’s QA team were using the new MEX system for the first time. This involved viewing and editing the items’ metadata directly over a web interface within the metadata repository. Staff involved in the workflow received basic training in using the MEX software. It had been


hoped that this environment would not require any double handling of data, and that the working time required on any one item could be kept to a minimum. These assumptions were both tested during the course of the project.

TLF’s QA staff experienced some difficulties using the first version of the MEX software. This version had limited functionality for editing and managing multiple items, and due to the tight development schedule, there was no allowance for earlier harvesting, editing or publishing. Following this experience, the staff made many suggestions for enhancements to MEX that would assist the role of the QA team in future. These were itemised and will be included in future MEX development cycles.

For the purposes of this project, it was assumed that the items had been through a quality‐assured selection process and were fit for purpose. Items were selected by museum staff to address criteria set by TLF, with a focus on the National Curriculum. A small number of these items were subsequently excluded due to lack of educational value. The inclusion of a second level of TLF selection would have been beneficial from both a time and quality perspective, and should be considered in future as a procedure that follows the harvesting of metadata records.

The QA process was reviewed after one month, at which point the educational soundness check was reintroduced. For the National Museum of Australia items, a step for ‘institutional approval’ was included prior to the editorial sign‐off. The project schedule allowed 20 days for ten items to undergo the QA process. In reality this could be done much more quickly depending on staff availability. All participating museum staff members were given a login to MEX and could view items at any stage in the process. This is a significant evolution in TLF QA process, emphasising the museum as a ‘partner’ not just a ‘supplier’, and was well received by the museums.

There were many constraints for TLF staff involved in the QA process. These constraints included:

the short time frame for processing large quantities of data

the new editing environment

the large number and variable quality of items

that the museums currently do not write with an education (or other) audience in mind

the variable quality of the metadata.

The two most contentious issues within the QA process related to educational soundness and managing IP, or ‘quality’ versus ‘risk’. The quality/risk dichotomy is perhaps the major issue in publishing digital content for schools in Australia, and one that we therefore wished to explore in the project.

What is educational quality?

The educational soundness process determines the value of an item as a resource to promote the learning students are expected to achieve through their schooling. The process determines what is of educational value during the selection of items, research on them, and the writing of descriptions for them. Educational value is fundamental to the current TLF QA process.

Within the project, the educational soundness review was conducted in a shorter time frame than usual. Overall, it was considered a challenging task given the vastly different inputs from each museum, the large number of items and the editing environment.


The fact that museums provided the written descriptive text for each item (title, description, educational value statement) was well received by TLF. However, each description varied both between and within organisations, and reflected a different style from the usual TLF descriptions. This raises two issues:

whether TLF needs to review and modify the approach it used within the project for procuring and receiving descriptions

the need to provide the museums with further guides and training. These guides would assist the museum educator or writer when records are being reviewed as part of a ‘data clean‐up’ process, during a quality control process, or when records are first being acquired and described.

The descriptive text includes an educational value statement. This is a series of brief points about the item that identifies for the potential user the key areas of educational value that can be elicited from the item. These paragraphs need both to provide sound knowledge and information, and be interesting and engaging. Ideally the writer of this text has a sound understanding of the requirements and expectations of the target audience, the education user.

TLF staff checked the educational soundness of the descriptive text written by museum staff, and if necessary checked facts and dates. This process ensured that the text was relevant to the item and stimulated the imagination and interest of the education user. The process highlighted issues that arise when information is written for different purposes. Museums write information about objects that meet the requirements of providence, exhibition and marketing, whereas TLF required information that encouraged discovery of the item in an online environment for the purpose of teaching and learning.

Hence, typical issues noted by TLF educational soundness reviewers about the metadata provided by the three museums included:

Integrity of information – information that, when an item is discovered out of the context of an exhibition, may be misleading

Style and language – information presented in a style suitable for general public and marketing within a museum context, that may not meet requirements for teaching and learning

Extraneous information – information that refers to the context of an exhibition or online website that does not directly relate to the item.

Insufficient information – information that does not adequately exploit the full teaching and learning potential of the item such as inadequate technical details about the use or operation of an item; insufficient details such as dates, places or names; or limited historical context for an item

Technical glitches – information was not transferred from the museum system to TLF system due to technical issues resulting in no data results or data that appeared in an incorrect format or fields.

The museums believed that the information they transferred to TLF was of a high quality, and teachers and students rated the descriptions very positively in the School Trial (see the following section, ‘Testing the model in schools’). Overall, however, TLF’s QA team believe that following harvest there is still a need for a formal process to identify gaps and errors in the integrity of information within the descriptive text provided by museums – essentially acting as an extra set of eyes.


Education reviewers suggested museums seek to adopt a consistent framework for writing information on items so that external bodies such as the TLF can apply predictable QA processes to meet their audience requirements. Museums, though, have legacy systems containing thousands of items and it is impractical to rewrite data for every item that is digitised, many of which are not even relevant to an education audience. This suggests that writing metadata with an audience in mind and selecting ‘educationally relevant’ content go hand‐in‐hand. An important consideration, regardless of who writes the description and educational value statement, is conveying the reason for a curator or museum educator having selected an item. This reason may often be obscure to the uninitiated, but is often crucial in identifying the actual educational value of the object.

Schools Online Thesaurus

The Schools Online Thesaurus (ScOT) provides a controlled vocabulary of terms used in Australian and New Zealand schools. An important part of TLF’s QA process is to make items discoverable by including in the metadata appropriate keywords, ScOT terms, and temporal and spatial data. Using ScOT terms is of benefit to museums because it makes the digital content that they supply discoverable using the same retrieval systems used to discover content from other collections. As part of the project, TLF provided ScOT to each of the participating museums free of licensing fees.

Managing intellectual property

A major constraint in selecting and using museum content was the IP status of items. The strict management of IP across all TLF projects is primarily designed to ensure that copyright holders are appropriately acknowledged, and that the use of resources by schools does not require ongoing payment to collecting societies.

This project offered the opportunity to:

enter into dialogue with the participating museums, and ascertain the specific needs of the education sector with regard to copyright, in order to facilitate a sustained flow of content to schools

simplify access to museum materials, by enabling schools to access the materials directly from the museum websites

identify the balance between value and risk for TLF in the provision of content to schools.

IP arrangements were scoped in an initial proposal that was developed in consultation with all participants. A key facet of the early consultations was to canvass the school sector’s specific needs with regard to copyright.

The proposal informed the preparation of an agreement that Curriculum Corporation entered into separately with each participating museum. Following the execution of the agreements, Curriculum Corporation’s Copyright and Permissions team made contact with each museum to discuss the IP process and licensing arrangements. As the three museums remained responsible for obtaining permissions, it was important to equip their staff with information that would inform negotiations with copyright holders.

TLF IP staff involved in the project identified the following requirements for future IP management:

The expression of educational rights in plain English and in a manner that facilitates broad educational use


Tiers or bands of access to content depending on what the copyright holder is prepared to grant. This allows the opportunity to set narrower rights, which are still adequate for education, for certain types of works

An IP audit of content, in line with the agreement and initial project set‐up conversations, to raise any potential issues with museum teams and in‐house legal counsel

Timely access to content by IP staff

Clarification of key fields, and requirements for acknowledgements and contributor metadata to be harvested, in order to meet the agreed copyright and moral rights requirements

A changed acquisitions process to ensure the museums are obtaining rights that can enable the ongoing use of the item for educational purposes.

TLF’s IP staff also emphasised the importance of early meetings between museum teams and TLF’s IP team, as this would ensure that licensing arrangements and third‐party permissions would meet the requirements of the project agreement. They also highlighted the need to set up museum web templates appropriately (eg to include TLF logo and agreed rights statement).

Copyright issues

While museums may possess the physical item in their collection, they do not always control the copyright. For example, copyright may be vested in third parties who may be unknown to the museums. In many circumstances the copyright holder is not even the person or organisation that provided the item to the museum at the point of acquisition. This means that there is a significant onus on museums to identify whether an item is in copyright and who the relevant copyright holder is, and to maintain up‐to‐date records.

If the copyright holder has been contacted, the museum should keep records of what rights it can exercise in relation to the item. If the item is an older work, there may be incomplete information relating to copyright ownership and licensing terms, a key factor for a project of this kind. Resourcing work in this area can be difficult, particularly when current exhibition demands need to be managed, because it requires people with the right expertise, knowledge and time.

When the partnership agreements were struck for the project, the publishing and distribution perimeters had not been finalised, especially the online publishing environment. This led to the development of very broad rights licensed to accommodate a range of potentialities. The rights that were set out in the original agreements were highly detailed, communicated in legal language and were intended to account for all possible activities that the museums, Curriculum Corporation and educators might wish to make of the material. The breadth of these rights affected the items the museums were prepared to offer for the project, with a bias towards out‐of‐copyright, mass‐manufactured and natural history items.

It would be fruitful to consider whether the rights could be structured in a simpler, clearer manner. Museums and other licensing parties could then employ the licence terms directly in their permissions letters and during acquisition processes, rather than needing to remodel the language in a form that is understood by ordinary members of the public, which introduces the risk of distortion occurring. Also, only those rights that are needed, couched in easily understood language, should be obtained. The best scenario would be to have a small spectrum of licensing options that would be applied depending on the category of copyright work.


When licensing artistic works for the project (eg Papunya paintings; cartoons) the National Museum of Australia found that copyright holders were not prepared to grant permission for modifications to be made to the item itself. This conflicted with project guidelines whereby museums were required to obtain licences that permitted modification of third‐party copyright material in school settings. This was to account for the remixing scenarios that could arise in a collaborative online environment.

There was much discussion among all parties about the possible use of Creative Commons licences for certain items. Early consideration was given to whether a ‘Creative Commons +’ licence could be employed for the project. Both TLF and Powerhouse Museum continue to actively pursue this licensing avenue. Powerhouse Museum has since made all its web‐based text descriptions available using this licence arrangement.

Metadata exchange

A major aim of this project has been to set up a ‘reverse feed’ by which museums can automatically access the enhanced metadata to update their own records if they see fit to do so. This provides an opportunity for museums to update their databases and websites easily with quality‐assured content. It also helps museums to understand what content is being accessed by teachers, and how teachers and students are using that content.

Museums are keen to be part of the feedback loop. They want to be able to identify whether these items are in fact valuable to teachers and students, and to understand what other kinds of items would be valuable to include within the digital pool.


Access and engagement within delivery systems The intrinsic value of the items selected by the museums remains hidden if teachers and students are unable to access them, if they are not discoverable within a curriculum framework, or if there is no clear background educational context or narrative.

TLF developed Scootle and Scootle Sandbox to provide an effective interface to enable students and teachers to access the final quality‐assured records. They also include a combination of tools to engage students.

Scootle publishing environment

Scootle is a web‐based, national resource bank that provides access to over 8,000 digital resources for teaching and learning. Teachers can find interactive learning objects, images, audio files and movie clips via browse, search and filter technology. Scootle allows the creation of learning paths (collections of learning content interwoven with teacher comments and descriptions) that can be made available to students either on or offline. Teachers can share learning paths with their peers.

Scootle is currently being used by more than 2,000 schools, including:

Australian independent schools

Australian Catholic schools

Australian Capital Territory government schools

Northern Territory government schools

South Australian government schools.

Online collaborative learning environment used in the Trial

The online collaborative learning environment used in the School Trial, Scootle Sandbox, builds on the functionality, look and feel of the latest release of Scootle, with additional features that allow teachers to create and manage collaborative activities. Scootle Sandbox brings a huge range of high‐quality digital learning resources into an environment where students can collaborate to build understanding, express their learning and receive meaningful feedback using a range of innovative, easy‐to‐use online tools.

Features of Scootle Sandbox that support collaboration include:

a dynamic environment – students can add their own text, comments and online resources, and rearrange the workspace to build a structured, collaborative response to a task

feedback – teachers can provide ongoing feedback at any time, for student reflection and meaningful formative assessment

online identity – students create nicknames and choose an avatar for themselves in the live workspace

Scootle Chat – students can chat in real time, facilitates informal discussion and feedback for students and teachers

file upload and sharing – students can upload their own files and resources to attach to a collaborative activity

innovative map and timeline – students can interact with resources using Google maps and a unique timeline display.


Figure 3: Scootle Sandbox – collaborative features

The live workspaces

The live workspaces empower students to work together in a safe online environment that records their learning as they engage with a collaborative activity.

Scootle Chat

Students can participate in Scootle Chat as they engage in a collaborative activity. All chat comments are stored with a time stamp so that a record of the conversation can be kept. This is both for the students to refer back to, and for teacher assessment and feedback purposes.

File upload

Any files that are uploaded by students can be placed in the workspace.

Collaborative activity tabs

Each collaborative activity has a tab interface to access associated pages. Students collaborate on an activity within the live workspace tab. Students can also view resources on maps or timelines, or access the teacher feedback tabs at any time.

Activity options

Students can add their own text and comments, or attach files to the live workspace to build their own learning experience around the collaborative activity.

Item options

Each item in the live workspace can be viewed, edited, deleted, moved or commented upon by any of the participants.

Feedback

Teachers can add group assessment or feedback to individual students, and students can view both the group assessment and their own individual feedback.

Activity log

This feature allows the teacher to view the group’s activity on a timeline.


Testing the model in schools Before determining whether the model used in the project was sustainable and scalable we needed to test its value for end users. A school‐based trial to establish the educational value of the resources and the effectiveness of the online environment was therefore developed. The School Trial aimed to answer the following preliminary questions:

Is this a sustainable model for procuring and processing digital content from cultural organisations?

Are the resources of a suitable quality?

Are they relevant to the intended users, that is, teachers and students?

What is the educational value of the content?

How are teachers and students using this content online?

Should this model be used in the future? If so, with what improvements?

Assuming that the model is worthwhile, how do we make the whole process work best for all parties?

Scope The School Trial was designed to evaluate the content that the museums had selected and described, as well as the effectiveness of the online environment (Scootle Sandbox), particularly its collaborative features. Excluding the process of school selection, the Trial ran for about five weeks during March and early April. It took place in the final part of Term 1 of the school year, and included a workshop for teachers as well as classroom observations.

Four states, New South Wales, South Australia, Tasmania and Victoria, were invited to participate. Initially, the school sample included 15 primary and secondary schools. Within these 15 schools, the sample was to include 15–21 teachers and potentially 350 students.

Key questions

A number of key questions relating to the School Trial were identified, and are listed below. These questions relate to either the way that digital resources are selected, described and used, or the interactive online environments that most effectively facilitate teaching and learning:

1. What is the value of the museum‐selected and described digital resources for teaching and learning?

2. How can these resources be made more useable for teachers and students?

3. How are teachers using existing pedagogies, or developing new ones, when engaging with the museum content and creating collaborative learning activities?

4. What kinds of learning are students experiencing when engaging with these digital resources?

5. Can models of best practice be identified for the use of digital resources in collaborative learning activities within an interactive online environment?

6. What is the value of the collaborative online environment for teaching and learning?


7. How can the collaborative online environment be improved to make it more useable for teachers and students?

8. What kinds of learning are students experiencing when engaging with the collaborative online environment?

9. Does the collaborative online environment support particular teaching and learning strategies?

10. Are there additional functions and features that can be incorporated into the collaborative online environment?

These questions are covered in the sections of the report relating to curriculum content, learning design, the learning experience, evaluation of learning outcomes and the online environment.

Methodology TLF’s objective for this project was to develop evidence‐based accounts of good practice in the use of digital resources that had been selected and described by the three museums. The proposed methodology included the selection of a valid sample of schools, a Preliminary Workshop for teachers, the development and use of a range of research instruments, and classroom observations.

School selection

Time and budget influenced the number of schools selected to participate in the School Trial. It was judged that a minimum of 12 schools would provide a representative sample of teachers and students, providing that the sample included primary, secondary, urban and regional schools in a number of states and territories. Four states nominated schools that could be invited to participate.

The project team extended the sample to 15 schools to provide a buffer in case some schools withdrew before or during the period of the Trial. Of the 15 schools selected, two schools were unable to complete the Trial. The team considered that the 13 schools that completed the Trial comprised a representative sample.

Preliminary Workshop

We invited participating teachers from the schools selected for the Trial to a Preliminary Workshop in February 2009. The Workshop was designed to:

advise participants of the aims and objectives of the Trial

demonstrate the collaborative online environment

allow participants to search for and review selected digital resources

allow participants to create and share sample collaborative activities.

Additional resources provided to participants included a list of participating schools; copies of parent/guardian, teacher, and principal consent forms; the Teacher Pre‐Trial Survey; and the Scootle User Guide for Teachers (TLF 2009).

Data collection tools

A number of data collection tools and methods were developed and used to record teachers’ and students’ engagement with the digital resources. These included online


surveys, classroom observation, and analysis of the proposed and completed collaborative activities.

Online surveys included a Teacher Pre‐Trial Survey, Teacher Post‐Trial Survey, Student Survey and School Leader Survey. Structured interventions were designed to quickly identify issues preventing the development of effective collaborative learning activities and to provide timely technical support. The team used classroom observations; analysis of preliminary, live and completed collaborative learning activities; and videoing of sessions to understand interactions that could not be fully described in the surveys.

The Teacher Pre‐Trial Survey included 25 questions about the school context in which the Trial was to take place, the composition of the selected class or classes, and the use of ICT in the school and in particular the teacher’s classroom. These questions were designed to elicit both summative and qualitative data.

The Teacher Post‐Trial Survey included 44 questions concerning teachers’ experiences and observations when developing collaborative learning activities and using them in the classroom. Questions were designed to elicit quantitative and qualitative data about a teacher’s planning and delivery, as well as their evaluation of student engagement and achievement. The Survey established state and local curriculum contexts in which the activities were developed, and evaluated the usefulness of the museum‐supplied digital resources within these contexts. It also elicited detailed data about the online pedagogies teachers used, the actual learning experiences of students, and evaluations of the Scootle Sandbox collaborative workspace.

The Student Survey included 22 questions and was completed at the conclusion of the students’ engagement with the interactive learning activities. It aimed to provide basic data that could be correlated with the two teacher surveys. It also sought to record student perceptions about the learning experience, in particular, collaborative learning, learning outcomes, comparisons between working online and conventionally, and the tools provided in the collaborative online environment.

The School Leader Survey included 11 questions that ascertained school policy and practice for the use by students of online resources, including the internet. It also elicited information about areas such as supporting equipment and technologies (eg interactive whiteboards) and IP issues.

Observations by the research team of collaborative activities usually occurred during sessions in which students were engaging with an activity. However, the team made a number of videos of teachers and students to allow for later analysis of student responses and of student and teacher collaborations. Where a member of the research team could not attend a live session, the team recorded and viewed the collaborative activity remotely using ‘Snagit’ screen‐capture software.

Networks of engagement

At each stage of the Trial, teachers were given opportunities through the online environment to share their collaborative learning activities. They were provided with a list of all participating schools and teachers as well as the states and sectors from which they were drawn. This allowed teachers with shared experiences (eg Catholic teachers; primary teachers) to independently communicate with each other during the Trial.

During teachers’ development of collaborative learning activities and the subsequent School Trial, the teachers were supported through a listserv managed by TLF project and technical staff. The listserv operated from 12 February 2009 to 3 April 2009. Participants were able to view queries and responses as well as ideas about curriculum and pedagogy, and discuss the


interface of the collaborative online environment. The listserv provided sample collaborative learning activities developed by TLF staff, as well as sample activities developed and published by participants.

An analysis of the collaborative learning activities at each stage of development allowed judgements to be made about the quality of the learning design as well as student engagement with the digital resources and the teaching and learning models selected.

Conclusion The following table lists the number of collaborative learning activities, survey responses, and observations for each school participating in the Trial. This data forms the basis for the statistical information provided in this report. All graphs and statistical data are derived from the four surveys.

Table 3: Summary of data collected in the Trial

School School Leader Survey

Pre‐Trial Survey*

Post‐Trial Survey*

Student Survey

Interactive learning activity

Observations Recorded activity

School A 1 1 1 1 1

School B 2 2 17 1 1 1

School C 1 2 11 1 1

School D 2 2 24 2 1 1

School E 1 1 1 9 1 1 1

School F 1 2 1 3 1 1

School G 1 2 2 8 3 1 1

School H 1 2 1 5 1 1 1

School I 1 1 4 1 1

School J 1 1 1 5 7 1 1

School K 1 1 1 1 1

School L 1 1 12 1 1 1

School M 1 1 1 9 3 1 1

School N 1

School O 1

TOTAL 8 19 17 108 23 12 10

* In some schools, more than one teacher participated in the Trial and up to two teachers may have completed a survey.


What the case studies tell us This section of the report summarises and analyses data relating to five key themes within the School Trial: curriculum content, learning design, the learning experience, evaluation of learning outcomes, and the online learning environment.

This is contextualised with background information about the schools and classes that participated in the Trial. This information includes school location and student demographics; IT facilities; teacher capability and expertise in the use of TLF content; and specific data about the classes involved in the Trial and how they engaged with the content online.

The schools A total of 15 schools from four Australian states and territories were invited to participate in the Trial. Of these schools, two were from New South Wales, three from South Australia, four from Tasmania, and six from Victoria. Ultimately one Victorian secondary college withdrew from the Trial. Another primary school could not complete the Trial within the designated period. While only two of the schools within the Trial could be classified as rural schools, School M involved at least two additional rural schools using a distance‐learning model.

Government primary or secondary schools constituted 73 per cent of the Trial schools, and Catholic schools 27 per cent. Most schools in the Trial were government or Catholic primary schools (66 per cent); the remainder were government secondary schools.

Schools ranged from small schools with 101–200 students to very large schools with more than a thousand students.

Figure 4: Enrolment numbers of participating schools

All schools involved in the Trial were coeducational. In one school, where gender imbalance had led to the creation of boys‐only classes, one of these classes participated in the Trial.


Schools’ use of ICT The ability to test the quality of digital resources in the Trial, as well as teacher and student readiness to engage with the resources in a collaborative online environment, depended on the quality and capabilities of the schools’ ICT infrastructure and policies. Information about ICT‐related policies, protocols and facilities within schools was derived from the School Leader Survey and the Teacher Pre‐Trial Survey.

Policies and protocols

Schools in the Trial have a number of policies and protocols in place to regulate student use of the internet. Some schools have internet usage (IU) agreements to which students and parents must agree.

Access to online content occurs either in classroom contexts where a teacher supervises students, or in libraries where students may have to police themselves. Schools in the Trial usually regulate access to content on the internet through filters provided through the education system, the internet service provider or the school server. Peer‐to‐peer communication, such as email, occurs in some schools at lunchtime using library computers.

While the School Leader Survey did not specifically ask about policies and protocols in place for schools’ use of third‐party digital resources, school leaders noted the importance for schools of knowing that digital content is from an authoritative source. In some schools in the Trial, issues relating to IP are covered by an IU agreement. More generally, issues relating to plagiarism are dealt with in classrooms. Of the school leaders who returned surveys, 100 per cent regarded the origin of a resource as either important or very important. Of these, over 83 per cent regarded the reliability and accuracy of resources as very important.

Jurisdictions and sectors have been proactive in communicating the need for schools to adhere to IP laws when using third‐party print, digital and online resources. While most schools provide specific guidance to teachers about IP, it is a highly complex task to record all use and reuse of third‐party resources by teachers and students. Most schools in the Trial (over 83 per cent) indicated that it was very important for schools and teachers to know that digital content is free from copyright agency fees.

Facilities

Many schools in the Trial have a range of connected computers (ie desktops and notebooks) in libraries, laboratories and classrooms. This allows teachers and students flexibility in accessing online resources as needed within the teaching program. School leaders indicated that, overall, 71 per cent of classes use the internet on a daily basis, and the remaining 29 per cent use it on most days of the week.

Most schools in the Trial had interactive whiteboards (IWBs) that teachers could use to demonstrate content. The boards could also be used by students in supervised situations for group work and for reporting back to the class. School leaders identified constraints on accessing such equipment due to scarce resources or the grade level of the student. At the upper end of the range, one school leader noted: ‘IWBs are located in all classrooms which makes for easy access, with all classrooms having a 1:3 ratio of computer access overall, including notebook availability’.

Although schools in the Trial had a range of equipment to support students, this did not guarantee their timely use in the collaborative activities. Some teachers used IWBs to demonstrate the features and functions of the online environment before students engaged with an interactive learning activity, or encouraged individuals and groups to use the IWBs


to present completed work. In other cases, such use might have led to a more successful interactive learning activity.

Teacher capability and experience

The Trial did not seek to ascertain information about teacher capability in using ICT or online resources. The Teacher Pre‐Trial Survey asked two questions that provided some indication of the extent to which teachers generally, and the teacher participants in particular, use online resources for teaching and learning.

Within Trial schools, 67 per cent of teachers are familiar with and use TLF content, although the level of familiarity depends on the year level taught by the teacher. Within the group of teachers selected to participate, 73 per cent identified their use of TLF content as ‘sometimes’ to ‘often’. Responses in the Teacher Pre‐Trial Survey regarding use of this content ranged from ‘Generally at the beginning of sessions for modelling and to increase student engagement’ to ‘I have used learning objects extensively in all key learning areas. I have used pathways before accessing files from Film Archives Australia, the War Memorial etc’.

Generally, teachers seemed to be more familiar with using individual learning objects and digital resources, rather than developing interactive collaborative activities using a number of digital resources.

Classes The Trial incorporated a wide spread of year levels across primary and secondary schools. The year levels represented most highly were years 5 and 6 in primary schools and years 8 and 9 in secondary schools.

Figure 5: Year levels participating in the Trial

Classes selected by schools to participate in the Trial were not entirely representative of the diverse student demographic of Australian schools. Figure 6 below indicates the percentage


of students in participating classes with language‐other‐than‐English, Indigenous or low socioeconomic backgrounds. While there were a number of students from each of these groups in the classes, only one of the thirteen schools had a significant percentage of students in the class (ie 81–90 per cent) who came from a low socioeconomic background.

Figure 6: Backgrounds of students who participated in the Trial

Classroom organisation

The Pre‐Trial Survey did not require participating teachers to comment on issues such as vertical groupings of students, students from different levels (eg middle and upper primary) attempting the same learning paths, or single‐gender classroom groupings. These arrangements became apparent through classroom observation and an analysis of online collaborative activities.

In some schools, small groups were supervised by a teacher librarian, while in other schools, classes comprising at least two and up to four year levels participated in a single collaborative activity. The only constraint on the number of students participating in a collaborative activity was that Scootle Sandbox could not allow more than 26 connections at one time to an individual collaborative activity.

Use of computers in the Trial

Teachers at the Preliminary Workshop expressed a variety of intentions relating to student groupings for the collaborative activities. These ranged from ‘Two separate classes with one small group drawn from each. We are working together on this to simulate a virtual community’ to ‘I am planning to work with a group of seven students to make use of the seven computers in my room. These are the students that I plan to run the collaborative learning activities with. I am planning to involve the whole class in other ways such as through the sharing of resources/learning objects available’.


Figure 7: Anticipated computer use


Curriculum content Curriculum has a dual and interconnected focus in this report. On one level, curriculum is defined from an education jurisdiction and a school perspective, with teachers in the Trial searching for and developing collaborative learning activities that were relevant to their own curriculum. The question of teacher and student access to online curriculum content as required is also significant. On another level curriculum relates to the digital resources selected and described by museum curators, and the usefulness of the selection and descriptive text (titles, descriptions, educational value statements) to a school sector audience of teachers and students.

Selection of content by teachers

During the Preliminary Workshop, teachers were able to search for content relevant to their curriculum using Scootle Sandbox. In a simple search, the software interrogated TLF database and returned learning objects and digital curriculum resources relevant to the search terms. The content provided by the three museums formed a small proportion of this material. Teachers were advised that while there was some flexibility in the choice of resources, they should try to ensure that the majority of resources were those provided by the museums.

The success of searches for museum‐provided content relevant to a theme depended on the topic. Teachers seeking to construct collaborative activities on a popular topic sometimes had to select outside the pool to create an authentic collaborative activity. For example, a number of teachers decided to focus on aspects of the Australian gold rushes. The term ‘Gold Rush’ returned 28 digital curriculum resources, some of which were learning objects. Of these 28 resources, only 4 were provided by the three museums.

Conversely another teacher, who was searching for resources on ‘World War II’, found numerous resources supplied by the museums. In the latter case, all of the 31 resources found came from the museum collections.

The capacity of teachers in the Trial to search for and discover relevant museum content may have been compromised by the museums’ use of keyword metadata. It was apparent to the researchers that many more museum items were discovered by browsing through subject headings rather than by using keywords to search. This indicates that a higher level of skill in the use of thesaurus terms might be required by museums in future.

The following topics that were selected by schools were based on their curriculum, school teaching program, or the resources available.

Table 4: Teacher selection of museum and other TLF content

School Topic Museum content

Other TLF digital

resources

Learning objects

Other TOTAL

School A* Land and identity 6 3 9

School B Gender stereotypes in the media

1 1 1

School C How to have fun! 5 3 8

School D Introduction to Scootle Sandbox; Gold Rush document analysis

1 6 7

School E Family matters: the strength of belonging

6 6


School F War correspondence activities 4 4

School G Toys; Gold 1; Gold 2 3 6 1 10

School H The history of toys 9 1 10

School I Australian identity 7 7

School J The Gold Rush in Australia* 4 2 6

School K Development of communication

2 6 8

School L Who do they think we are? 4 7 1 12

School M Visual stories focusing on Aboriginal artwork

5 1 5

TOTAL 57 34 2 2 93 + The order of these topics is based on the order of schools described in the individual case studies. More details about each case study can be seen in Appendix 1.

* In this case the teacher developed six separate collaborative activities on different aspects of the Gold Rush in Australia, usually with one resource used in each activity.

Appendix 3 lists the total number of digital resources and learning objects used within the Trial. Of the 643 digital resources provided to schools as part of the new model of collaboration between TLF and the three museums, 55 digital resources were selected by schools to include in collaborative learning activities. Of this number, six resources were used more than once.

The Teacher Post‐Trial Survey revealed some negative responses to content selection. These included: ‘The content was restrictive. We were unable to develop a learning path built around Level 3 Health with the available resources. I attempted to put together a learning path on the flying doctors but I wanted to be able to insert images from other sources. It was frustrating’; and ‘Initially, I did find it difficult locating appropriate museum content. The resources available to me at the time of planning were limited and I questioned just how difficult this Trial was going to be. However, with some assistance I was able to broaden my choice of possible museum content and plan appropriately’. At the other end of the scale, 79 per cent of teachers found the digital museum content suitable for learning activities.

Curriculum focus

The School Trial did not seek to encourage teachers to select content and develop collaborative activities that were unrelated to the schools’ state curriculum or teaching program. Accordingly, the listserv and the questionnaires were used to encourage teachers to define those parts of the curriculum that the collaborative activities would support.

Most of the teachers in the Trial developed content related to the Humanities and Social Sciences. However, as Table 5 shows, they recognised the suitability of the content and the collaborative activities for a range of other curriculum, syllabus and standards areas.

Table 5: Links to state curriculums

Curriculum Learning area/Domain

NSW K‐6 Syllabuses Human Society and Its Environment

SA Curriculum Standards and Accountability Framework

Society and Environment

Tasmanian Curriculum English

Health and Wellbeing

History and Society


Literacy

Information and Communication Technology

Victorian Essential Learning Standards The Arts

English

Personal Learning

Humanities

Humanities – History

Selection and description of resources by museums

Curriculum content was selected and described by the museums participating in the project: Museum Victoria, the National Museum of Australia and Powerhouse Museum. These museums provided about 643 digital resources for schools to use.

Teachers in the Trial understood the museum content to be the actual digitised resources and the descriptive metadata (titles, descriptions, educational value statements). Teacher evaluation of this content was provided in the responses to the Teacher Post‐Trial Survey.

Figure 8: Teacher evaluation of museum‐provided metadata

Even though only a limited number of digital resources were available for the Trial, teachers were generally positive about the quality of these materials. While 73 per cent of teachers believed that the museum content was comparable in quality to other TLF resources, 100 per cent believed that it provided important background information and was well described for their purposes. Appendix 1, which provides individual case studies, includes tables showing the digital resources used by each school. Those bolded were selected by teachers from the digital resources supplied and described by the museums. Teachers frequently


found it necessary to augment the museum‐provided resources with others from the general TLF pool, as indicated in the following example.

Table 6: Digital resources selected by one school in the School Trial

TLF‐ID Digital resources

M000223

R6166

M000208

R4617

M000202

M000177

‘Race to the gold diggings of Australia’ board game, 1850–69

Hargrave’s gold mining cradle, 1851

Model of the Welcome Stranger nugget, 1858–85

Chinese miners, 1877

Ned Kelly’s Jerilderie letter, 1879

Ned Kelly’s death mask, 1880

A number of primary and secondary teachers focused on the gold rushes in Australia. These teachers tended to use more non‐museum resources in designing their collaborative activities. This suggests that it would be worthwhile to select resources from museums that provide content about a particular topic.

Writers for the National Curriculum Board are developing a new National History Curriculum. This will define key issues, topics, periods and themes for national study. The new curriculum might provide opportunities for TLF and participating museums to identify and create key collections of digital resources to meet the future needs of primary and secondary schools.

Language

Teachers and students in the study were generally positive about the selection process, understanding that the number of resources might increase exponentially in future. However, the language that the museums used to describe digitised items was sometimes problematic for school audiences, especially primary school students. Ninety‐three per cent of teachers found the language in the descriptions and educational value statements to be ‘user‐friendly’ or ‘adequate’, while 7 per cent found it ‘too technical’. Three teachers noted the overuse of ‘technical language’, while one teacher found that the language used in the Powerhouse Museum resources that they had selected was particularly technical.

This problem was compounded by the way in which the online environment handled resources. Because students accessed content through the museum websites, teachers could not modify or adapt the educational value statements for students. This is a significant limitation of the publishing model used in the project. Where teachers provided positive feedback about the descriptions and educational value statements, this was largely due to their interventionist approach to the content: these teachers discussed the language and meaning of each statement before their students began independent work.

Usefulness of content

At the conclusion of the Trial, 79 per cent of teachers believed that this content was suitable for collaborative learning activities. Typical responses included: ‘For this topic they were suitable. The pictures were good quality; clear and easily viewable. Students could relate to the pictures. They knew what they were from the descriptions’; or ‘The content gave a great snapshot of the history of the item as well as putting it into an historical context. Some of the information from the same source (eg ‘Melbourne’s Biggest Family Album’) was repetitive. The information encouraged divergent thinking and [encouraged students] to relate to their own experiences. Students had a fascination with the old photographs’.


A particularly detailed response to this question from one teacher was the following: ‘The resources that I used were relevant and connected well with the unit of work. [They] added value and supported the discussions, group work, book work, individual tasks and research from previous/ongoing lessons. Knowing that the resources that they were viewing were actual real‐life artefacts, the students saw how relevant the content of the other classroom learning was, making their own connections and seeing value in what they were doing’.

Access to content

As much of the content made available for the Trial was housed on the three museums’ websites, the researchers were interested to ascertain whether this content was readily available to teachers and students as required. This was particularly important because teachers might typically access content in out‐of‐school hours for planning and evaluation, while students would access it for learning.

In the Teacher Post‐Trial Survey, about 79 per cent indicated that the content was available most of the time. Three of the teachers indicated that it was ‘sometimes’ available. Some of these comments related to bandwidth and the user’s use of Scootle Sandbox as well as the museum websites. Other comments related specifically to accessing content on museum websites (eg ‘occasional images were unavailable from Museum Victoria’).

Exemplars for the use of curriculum resources

Teachers within schools participating in the Trial each created between one and six collaborative learning activities. Teachers could theoretically include numerous digital resources in any one activity. Three collaborative activities are included below to exemplify uses of digital resources within learning design. These exemplars include two from primary schools and one from a secondary school within the Trial. The complete exemplars, excluding the student input, are included in Appendix 2.

Model 1 – ‘How to have fun!’ (Appendix 2.1): developed for a primary school, this is of interest in that the three teachers selected eight digital resources from four museum collections, with two of those collections belonging to the participating museums. These teachers were able to build a personal collection of resources that sat within a curriculum context and were relevant to and useful for students. Note that teachers did not have to modify the language of the descriptive text as they created language support activities within the collaborative activity.

Model 2 – ‘Who do they think we are?’ (Appendix 2.2): developed for a primary school, this involved the teacher selecting 13 digital resources from these collections. Five digital resources (ie the Indigenous artworks) were provided by the National Museum of Australia, and one was a TLF learning object. The other seven resources, from PM, were described by TLF writers and had undergone the traditional QA process. As in Model 1, the teacher who designed Model 2, through drawing upon the various collections discoverable in the online environment, was able to shape a personal collection of resources that was thematically unified.

Model 3 – ‘Aboriginal visual stories’ (Appendix 2.3): this was developed for students as the third and culminating collaborative activity, using a distance learning model. Previous activities (ie ‘Yawalurra’ and ‘Storm camps’) each included one digital resource and asked students to imaginatively respond to the Indigenous artwork that they had selected. All but one of the digital resources used in this activity were drawn from the museum‐selected and described content. While there were few questions or tasks in the collaborative activity, there were high expectations about what each student could produce. As in Model 2, the teacher was explicit about how to use the online environment.


Learning design According to the Pedagogy Strategy: Learning in an Online World, ‘Pedagogies that integrate information and communication technologies can engage students in ways not previously possible, enhance achievement, create new learning possibilities and extend interaction with local and global communities’ (MCEETYA 2005A, p 2).

The M&EDCE project, in seeking to explore this idea, researched how teachers might draw on a range of pedagogical frameworks, as well as teaching and learning strategies, when creating collaborative learning activities using the rich online learning environment provided.

Pedagogical frameworks

In discussion with the trial teachers it was decided to analyse the pedagogical frameworks within the theories of learning concerned with cognitive development (eg Bloom’s taxonomy) or multiple intelligences and their relation to preferred learning styles (eg Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences). In doing so, The Le@rning Federation researchers recognise that jurisdictions have developed more contemporary frameworks, but because the study drew upon schools across jurisdictions, then Bloom’s and Gardner provided a common reference.

Cognitive development

Knowledge of a learner’s cognitive development can be expected to underpin a range of teaching and learning activities. Teachers have used Benjamin Bloom’s ‘taxonomy of educational objectives’ since the 1950s to identify teaching and learning objectives. Bloom (1956) divided these objectives into three domains: affective, psychomotor and cognitive. He described a six‐level classification of cognitive development that includes a progression from lower‐level thinking tasks to tasks that require higher‐order thinking.

In the Teacher Post‐Trial Survey, teachers were specifically asked about the extent to which the collaborative activities they had created fostered the development of higher‐order thinking skills. The following table lists a number of their responses.

Table 7: Use of learning tasks to facilitate higher‐order thinking skills

We explored how historians interpret and analyse visual evidence before undertaking the trial.

Asking higher‐order students to put information into their own words.

Students were provided with a ‘rough draft’ booklet to use as they saw fit. Some used it to plan responses, or to write prior to typing. Task 3 was a challenge until I reframed the persuasive text as a challenge to sell the rollerblades to me using descriptive language. This authentic motivation inspired good responses.

Tasks such as the Ned Kelly response provided children with an opportunity to present ideas with greater ‘thought’, however true higher‐order thinking tasks were not set. This learning pathway explored different features of Scootle [Sandbox] rather than higher‐order thinking options.

Because we have the SMART Board, I was able to present the activity as a whole class and show how to access and participate in it very easily. We also completed some work on reading body language before the students completed the task that asked them to choose one of the pictures of people who had come to Australia as either refugees or immigrants, so that they could imagine maybe how they felt but certainly how they looked – confident, relaxed, happy, sad, etc. We also watched a Behind the News segment on the Victorian bushfires and made some comparisons to how the people made homeless by the bushfires were to people arriving in Australia as refugees or immigrants.

The following briefly outlines some examples of activities that incorporated some higher‐order thinking – listing a timeline of gold discoveries; describing the living conditions of the miners; illustrating the various tactics employed by bushrangers; making direct comparisons of clothing from the 1800s to now; constructing an original gold mining tool and then appraising the final design.


An amount of work had been completed previously within their online learning environment but here by operating first in a small group then moving to a whole group this offered a higher level or option for communication and critique. Previous online work has varied, some students are new and have just begun to explore discussion online using familiar topics prior to moving here to work focused material. Other students have worked online before and discussed how to critically observe and learn from material presented.

Through questioning and whole class discussion.

In the practice collaborative activity we ran with the kids on toys we had a rank and reason activity, where the students had to put the toys in the order they would have liked to play with when they were young and explain why it is in that order.

Clearly most teachers in the Trial were aware of higher‐order thinking skills and their potential to develop and extend thinking in collaborative activities. However, an analysis of the collaborative learning activities indicates that teachers’ expectations were not always achieved.

While remembering skills, or skills relating to knowledge, can involve highly complex and sophisticated learning tasks for students, their more limited use is evident in instructional language such as define, recall, recognise, remember, who, what, where, when. Remembering would normally be an element of any collaborative activity in which teachers sought to scaffold learning.

In a number of schools in the Trial, even though the proposed task was intended to develop higher‐order thinking skills, many of the questions were simple comprehension questions that elicited very simple responses. In these cases, students typically requested access to additional digital resources and further questions. An additional problem with using questions to encourage remembering is that they do not necessarily aid or lead to collaborative learning. At their most sophisticated, the collaborative learning activities used recall or remembering to link the learning to prior educational experiences before moving quickly to tasks requiring higher‐order thinking.

Understanding (ie skills relating to more complex kinds of comprehension) was encouraged through instructional language such as describe, compare, contrast, rephrase, put in your own words, explain the main idea’. These skills were highly achievable when using digital resources in a collaborative activity. Students could be requested to compare and contrast different digital images, describe an image either using or not using the description and educational value statements, and demonstrate understanding through explanation.

In the Trial, the more limited collaborative learning activities did not encourage students to compare or contrast resources, but instead treated them as isolated objects for study. The more successful collaborative learning activities asked students to compare and contrast (eg ‘What do the objects have in common? How are they different?’), and rephrase (eg ‘Use the photo to write your own short, sharp persuasive description of Spiritline inline skates’). Model 1 – ‘How to have fun!’ (Appendix 2.1) and Model 2 – ‘Who do they think we are?’ (Appendix 2.2) include excellent examples of how to develop understanding skills in a collaborative activity.

The skill of applying was fostered by instructional language such as apply, classify, use, choose, employ, write an example, solve, how many, which, what is. There were ample opportunities for teachers to encourage these thinking skills in the collaborative learning activities. Students could use multiple digital resources to classify, to use and select, to extract examples, and for summative activities (eg ‘how many …?’). Some of the more interesting collaborative learning activities asked students to apply their knowledge in novel ways. For example, an activity based on wartime letters and diaries asked students to respond as if in character, writing their own diary entries and letters. Model 3 – ‘Aboriginal


visual stories’ (Appendix 2.3) required students to develop original graphic and text narratives based on what they had observed.

The skill of analysing was fostered by teachers’ use of instructional language such as identify motives/causes, draw conclusions, determine evidence, support, analyse, why. Most collaborative learning activities developed during the Trial included at least some analytical questions (eg ‘Why do you think these people kept a diary?’). However, such questions frequently represented a limited component of the total questions and tasks.

Interestingly, questions requiring analysis were more evident in the collaborative learning activities developed by primary teachers. Model 1 – ‘How to have fun!’ (Appendix 2.1) asks students to view a video and make notes about ‘the activities you see the children doing, the purpose of the people who made the video, [and] what YOU think are some of the advantages of playing games’.

The skill of evaluating may involve students evaluating ideas, values and beliefs; evaluating product design; evaluating literary or art works; and offering opinions. Teachers in the Trial did not always include evaluation in the collaborative learning activities. Model 2 – ‘Who do they think we are?’ (Appendix 2.2) shows how students can be assisted to make judgements about ideas, values and concepts. It asks students to ‘rate the five inventions pictured from most valuable to least valuable’, ‘Using Scootle Chat, suggest useful criteria for evaluating inventions’ or ‘Decide on whether you think Ned Kelly should or should not be used to promote our country’.

Creating (ie skills requiring synthesis and creative response) was encouraged in teachers’ use of instructional language such as predict, write, design, synthesise, construct, how can we improve, what would happen if, how can we solve. A number of the collaborative learning activities included creating within the learning design. Model 1 – ‘How to have fun!’ (Appendix 2.1) incorporates creativity as a writing task: students have to imagine themselves as a child playing with toys (eg ‘Allen’s motorcycling collector cards, 1952’) at the time of their creation. Model 3 – ‘Aboriginal visual stories’ (Appendix 2.3) requires students to develop their own original artworks and text narratives after viewing a number of Indigenous artworks from the National Museum of Australia.

Catering for different learning styles

In Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences (1993) Howard Gardner defines and describes learning styles in relation to different kinds of intelligences. Any framework of preferred and non‐preferred learning styles within a class should be based on an understanding of each student’s learning needs and achievements.

Figure 9: Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences

Verbal‐linguistic Logical‐mathematical Visual‐spatial Bodily‐kinaesthetic

Musical Interpersonal Intrapersonal Naturalistic

The theory of multiple intelligences and different learning styles is widely understood by Australian teachers. The research team anticipated that teachers involved in the Trial might take into account students’ different learning styles in the design of collaborative learning activities. It was also recognised that online learning might cater for some of these learning styles more easily than others. Verbal‐linguistic, visual‐spatial, interpersonal and intrapersonal learning were clearly catered for by the content and the online learning environment.

Only one of the teachers in the Trial explicitly mentioned multiple intelligences in a collaborative activity: ‘Remember our Multiple Intelligences. Your responses can be


reflected in words, poems, plays etc or in pictures, collage, music, drawings, dance, etc as appropriate’. This represented a mature approach in which the teacher shared the very nature of learning with the students. In other cases, preferred learning styles were implicitly catered for within the learning design, or ignored completely.

Verbal‐linguistic learning was extensively catered for in the titles, descriptions and educational value statements created by the three museums; in the learning design developed by teachers; and through the nature of the live workspace (eg comments, chat). Many students had to read the sometimes complex descriptive text the museums provided. Teachers unintentionally ignored the learning needs of students who did not have verbal‐linguistic learning as a preferred learning style when they did not include explicit language analysis.

While very few models of good practice for the analysis of language are evident in the activities teachers developed within the Trial, one of the primary schools at least encouraged students to look up keywords in a dictionary so that they would gain an understanding of the basic terminology used. If the current delivery model is to be maintained, with students accessing the digital resource on a museum website, sound pedagogy will require all teachers to be teachers of language, and to make language activities a part of the learning design of a collaborative activity.

Logical‐mathematical learning styles were used in the learning design of collaborative activities in which students were required to analyse and sort resources. While logical thinking was often catered for in learning design, mathematical thinking was rarely encountered.

Most of the content supplied by museums was comprised of digital images rather than audio files, video files, or animations. These potentially catered for visual‐spatial intelligence. When a teacher decided that the still images alone were insufficient to cater for visual‐spatial learners, they included videos from outside the museum pool – for example, to provide a more vivid ‘living’ picture of children at play in a school yard in 1943 (Model 1 – ‘How to have fun!’, Appendix 2.1), or to show an Indigenous artist talking about Indigenous rock paintings (Model 3 – ‘Aboriginal visual stories’, Appendix 2.3).

The online learning environment also enabled teachers and students to use two tools – the map and the timeline – for students to explore specific digital resources and resources produced at the same or at different locations, or at a similar time. Using the timeline tool could potentially developed students’ skills relating to chronology. Unfortunately, many teachers did not find the map or the timeline tool useful in these learning contexts. This may have been because a number of the digital resources provided by museums did not including temporal and spatial metadata that could be readily harvested by TLF in time for the School Trial.

Visual‐spatial learners were also catered for when a teacher required students to develop their own visual works in response to the resources they had viewed and discussed. Models 2 (Appendix 2.2) and 3 (Appendix 2.3) are exemplary in this respect. In Model 2, students were required to develop visual materials based on what they had viewed. This included a design for a shirt to be used in the 2010 Commonwealth Games, and a new design for the $200 banknote. Within Model 3, students created new artworks and accompanying text narratives. A number of the collaborative activities did not augment the digital resources with more dynamic content (eg learning objects, video files, audio files). Nor did they set tasks for students that would require them to create new two or three‐dimensional objects.

Bodily‐kinaesthetic intelligence was not catered for by the digital resources or the online learning environment. It would have required teachers to contextualise learning within a


broader educational experience that necessarily took place away from a computer. Many teachers chose to plan their collaborative activity using a computer laboratory. Bodily‐kinaesthetic learning might have been more effectively catered for if the activities had occurred within the classroom, or if the tasks required students to engage in physical activity outside the classroom. One teacher’s collaborative activity, ‘How to have fun!’ (Appendix 2.1), engaged students with games and toys, but nowhere in the activity were students required to actually play a game. This example suggests that teachers need to be less constrained by the physical location in which the online learning takes place.

Musical intelligence was not catered for in any of the collaborative learning activities. If a topic relating to music had been selected for an activity, the same comments would apply as those made above about bodily‐kinaesthetic learning.

Interpersonal intelligence requires teachers to think about those students that learn most effectively in social situations. The School Trial was expected to cater for these kinds of learners through the nature of collaborative activities and the online learning environment. A number of schools in the Trial did cater for this type of intelligence by requiring students to work in pairs. In Model 2 (Appendix 2.2) the teacher had clearly thought about what was meant by a ‘collaborative’ activity and sensed that some students might need guidance in using the online learning environment. This teacher constantly set tasks requiring group work and group thinking, and set clear tasks for student leaders. She also recognised the need to be highly specific about the students’ engagement with the online learning environment, and to include advice in the instructions about the chat tool and about uploading files.

Intrapersonal intelligence was only fostered in the collaborative activities when it was catered for explicitly in the learning design, for example by providing opportunities to reflect, or requiring students to create resources that enhanced self‐knowledge. Most of the activities designed by teachers included questions that required students to reflect on what they were viewing. Only some of the collaborative activities took this further and asked questions or set tasks that challenged students’ values and assumptions.

Perhaps some of the topics selected by teachers naturally enabled them to ask questions or set tasks that led to transformative personal learning. An example of the latter can be seen in a collaborative learning activity developed by a primary school teacher. After linking topics relating to immigration and refugees to a class text that students had previously studied, the teacher was able to introduce students to intrapersonal learning by commenting: ‘When I arrived in Hobart from Queensland I really missed the beach because we spent a lot of time at the beach. Our first search, as a family, was to find a beach to sit on together to help us make a connection together to this new place. Imagine you are moving with your family to a new country. What one special thing would help you to remember the place and friends you will leave behind?’

Here the teacher used their own experience to model intrapersonal growth and understanding, and linked this understanding to a hypothetical situation students might encounter. Imagining this scenario forced students to challenge accepted knowledge and values about immigration and refugees by encouraging empathy with others in similar circumstances.

Naturalistic intelligence applies to those who learn best through interaction with the natural environment. While a number of collaborative activities included resources representing individuals interacting with their environment (eg gold miners), none required students to undertake fieldwork outside the classroom.


Teaching and learning strategies

The use of different teaching and learning strategies within collaborative learning activities requires teachers to have an understanding of each student’s stage of cognitive development and knowledge of their preferred ways of learning, so when students are taught to use tools and strategies they can start to use them independently.

Project, problem and inquiry‐based learning

Project‐based learning is an approach to learning that focuses on developing a product or project. Problem‐based learning focuses on the process of solving a problem, while inquiry‐based learning is a student‐centred, active learning approach focusing on questioning, critical thinking and problem‐solving.

Using these approaches in the design of collaborative learning activities enables students to construct knowledge and understanding during a series of lessons about an issue or concept that is relevant to their curriculum and their personal interests. This is not the same as asking students to answer questions about a topic or resource. The approach assumes that students are in control of the discovery of content and in developing solutions to problems.

None of the collaborative activities developed by the Trial schools used a pure project, problem or inquiry‐based learning approach. A number of teachers in the Trial indicated the potential for using this approach if they were to develop further learning activities. If TLF wants to model this kind of learning in a collaborative activity, it might consider developing a prototype that incorporate these specific approaches.

Active learning

Active learning strategies focus on exploration. When active learning occurs in an online environment, learners interact with the environment, manipulate objects within it, observe the effects of their interventions and construct interpretations of what they see. While active learning is intentionally catered for by TLF in the development of highly interactive learning objects, the content initially supplied by museums for the purposes of the Trial was more inert (eg objects, images of paintings).

Despite this, the Trial encouraged active learning because of the interactivity of the online learning environment. Students could search for resources using keywords or by using the spatial and temporal tools provided. They could also sort their own and others’ content and comments, and observe and construct interpretations. The learning design within the collaborative learning activities either alerted students to these opportunities or assumed that students would work it out by themselves.

Some teachers alerted students to these interactive functions and features through modelling on an IWB or by explicitly providing hints and prompts within the learning design. Models 1 and 2 (Appendixes 2.1 and 2.2) provide examples of exemplary practice in using the online learning environment for active learning (eg ‘Click on “Add comment” ’; ‘Drag your comment so it is below the picture’; ‘As you chat you will need to suggest …’; and ‘Add your banknote to Scootle Sandbox by clicking on “Attach file” ’.

Constructive learning

Constructive learning strategies highlight the context of learning, allowing students to learn from existing experience, knowledge and interests. When constructive learning occurs, learners construct models to explain observations, accept that there are multiple solutions to questions, use errors to clarify and refine knowledge in an activity, and draw upon prior knowledge. The majority of teachers did not include constructivist approaches in their


collaborative activities. The more limited collaborative learning activities created a ‘one size fits all’ approach or did not scaffold the learning experience by providing context.

The absence of constructive learning strategies in most of the activities may be due to a number of factors. The teacher might not apply normal practices to online learning. Teachers may not have had sufficient time to use a sophisticated learning design. They may also have focused on the technology rather than on learning. Alternatively, teachers may need frameworks or training in the use of constructivist approaches within a collaborative activity.

Some teachers were able to build a constructivist approach into the learning design of their collaborative activity. Model 2 – ‘Who do they think we are?’ (Appendix 2.2) scaffolds learning – for example, students’ exploration of symbols in a Mambo poster is further developed by viewing and reflecting on Australian stamps produced by Australia Post.

Collaborative learning

Collaborative learning strategies take advantage of, and build upon, shared individual knowledge. Collaborative learning can be seen in group work, where students attempt to complete a task in common. In such work, they communicate and adopt different roles and responsibilities. Most of the activities developed by teachers in the Trial encouraged some form of collaboration. If collaboration was a limited feature of some learning activities, it might also have been absent from the teacher’s normal classroom practice. If a student says: ‘I won’t ever look at anyone else’s answers – just mine’, it suggests that students in the class are not used to working in teams.

In most collaborative learning activities, tasks that required collaboration were implicitly rather than explicitly stated. Model 2 – ‘Who do they think we are?’ (Appendix 2.2) was again exemplary in its advice to students about how small and large groups should function (eg ‘In pairs, complete the learning object’; ‘As you “chat” you will need to suggest criteria’); and about the roles of students within the activity (eg ‘The team leader will list the five criteria’, ‘The team leader will complete the attached Survey Form’).

Social learning

According to Lev Vygotsky’s ‘zone of proximal development’, tasks that are too difficult for students to learn alone can be mastered when students interact, particularly when a more skilled child or an adult provides assistance. In Vygotsky’s exploration of cultural mediation and internalisation he describes how students acquire habits of mind, language, and symbolic knowledge through social interactions. The interactive functions and features of the online learning environment (eg Scootle Chat; the capacity for students to comment on each other’s ideas) provided opportunities for this zone to come into play.

Teachers at the Preliminary Workshop were apprehensive about the use of avatars and the chat tool. Many found it was important that they kept control of the avatars so they would know who was commenting. However, following the Trial teachers and students generally judged the use of avatars to be highly successful, as the anonymity of avatars encouraged many students to express their views in a social context without fear of being embarrassed by their peers.

Some teachers disabled the chat tool during the Trial, as they did not believe that students would use it responsibly. For a number of schools, chat might have seemed to be of limited value, yet its best use within a distance learning context suggests that it can be highly useful for teaching and learning. Predictably, in schools where teachers built the use of chat into their learning design (eg ‘As you think of designs … you can discuss them with your classmates using Scootle Chat’), the results were better.


Reflective learning

Reflective learning strategies provide opportunities for students to construct their own knowledge and understanding about a topic, idea or concept. This kind of learning requires students to explain their learning goals, define the strategies they will use to find information, explain how they discovered or arrived at an understanding, and manage and monitor their own learning.

Some teachers built opportunities for reflection into the design of the collaborative learning activities. Model 3 – ‘Aboriginal visual stories’ (Appendix 2.3) encouraged students to reflect on and develop opinions about the visual narratives of specific Papunya paintings. Such reflection was initially uninformed by the curatorial notes associated with the digital resource. Building on this initial engagement, the final activity allowed students to create their own images and stories to construct their own knowledge and understanding. In another school, students received special [paper] notebooks to record and reflect on their learning. Using simple approaches such as these could have improved the design of other collaborative learning activities that teachers developed.

Authentic learning

Authentic learning strategies require students to apply existing and new knowledge to real‐world tasks. The tasks must be meaningful and related to personal, local, national or global issues or problems.

A number of the topics selected by students were historically focused (eg the gold rushes). Some Victorian schools had already visited Sovereign Hill and the teachers were able to link the collaborative learning activity to student experience. In other cases, teachers were not able to link the tasks within a collaborative learning activity to real‐world tasks (see ‘Bodily‐kinaesthetic intelligence’ above).

Model 2 – ‘Who do they think we are?’ (Appendix 2.2) asked students to engage with local, national and global perspectives on Australian identity. At the end of the activity the teacher was able to ask a series of questions that summed up students’ learning: ‘So, who do they think we are? Do they think we are lawnmower‐pushing bushrangers in bright designer shirts, with dot paintings hanging on our walls? We are this … and so much more. Who we are is always changing …’

Opportunities

Given the short time period of the Trial, some teachers felt that they had not been able to use sufficiently varied approaches in the design of their collaborative learning activities.

The following representative comments are drawn from the Teacher Post‐Trial Survey.

Table 8: Pedagogies and learning tasks to be used in the future

As we only did this task with four students, we can see the value of creating whole class lessons that would facilitate more in‐depth discussions and a larger range of thoughts and ideas from a wider group of students. Also with a larger group there would be wider opportunity for more cooperative learning to occur.

Students designing their own inquiry.

Encouraging independent thought and research. Encouraging sharing of skills.

Step into the picture – Writer’s Notebook Task.

Scootle [Sandbox] supports the teacher as more of a facilitator of student learning. Collaborative activities can be created to suit different levels of literacy. Higher‐order thinking tasks for enrichment are a possibility.

Collaborative activities in other curriculum areas leading to more independent learning opportunities in preparation for secondary school.


Multiple intelligences and scaffolded learning – if in F2F would use with a whiteboard then maybe small groups completing tasks to later share with whole group. Collaboration across schools, group work between schools.

I could envision creating a learning path and then making it into a number of collaborative activities with differentiated questions for ability grouping. I can envision online home projects.

Homework tasks. Group projects. Group research tasks.

These comments indicate that, given more time and experience, teachers believe they could incorporate pedagogical frameworks, as well as teaching and learning strategies, into collaborative learning activities. The provision of professional development and exemplars could also offer models to improve the learning design that underpins teachers’ online collaborative learning activities.


The learning experience This section describes how students actually engaged with the collaborative activities designed by teachers. The issues that arose in analysing the learning experience of students broadly relate to participation, collaboration, engagement and learning outcomes.

It should be noted that there were disparities between teacher and student perceptions of the quality of the learning experience. This does not indicate that either the teachers or the students are incorrect; rather, it was due to the emphasis each group placed on particular aspects of the learning experience.

Participation and time spent

The Teacher Post‐Trial Survey and the Student Survey captured data and comments about student participation, as well as student time‐on‐task – in particular, the number of hours that students spent engaging with the collaborative learning activities in Scootle Sandbox.

The Student Survey revealed that learning had already moved beyond the classroom for some students, with almost 15 per cent of the sample engaging in the collaborative learning activity from home as well as in the teacher‐supervised classroom.

Figure 10: Time spent by students on the learning activity

Figure 10 shows that six of the students spent less than an hour on the task. This may be due to the limited nature of the tasks in a particular learning activity, or the speed with which some students achieved the intended learning outcomes. It may also have been affected by factors such as students’ absence from school or class.

At the other end of the scale, the eight students who spent more than seven hours on the collaborative activity were either accessing the activity from home as well as school, or were possibly among the students in the distance‐learning group, who had to complete some highly complex tasks in their analysis and creation of visual stories. Most students in the sample (about 87 per cent) spent between one and seven hours engaging with a collaborative learning activity. Over half the sample (almost 53 per cent) spent between three and seven hours working on an activity.

Each teacher was required to rate the participation of students. One hundred per cent of teachers said students actively participated in the learning experience.


Table 9: Teacher perceptions of student participation

Most did. We had some problems with understanding the material from ESL students.

Degrees varied but all had a go.

The student with the best typing skills participated noticeably more online than his peers. The draft workbook enabled all students an opportunity to think and plan where they felt comfortable.

Slower learners left typing and presentation to more capable students but were actively involved orally. I see this as a strength of [the] program.

Students worked in pairs with each taking turns to input information. A good activity for working collaboratively and synthesising ideas.

The whole class participated in this trial. They were put into five groups of four. Students that do not often offer opinions all participated in ALL three tasks.

The group of students I nominated to take part in this trial were purposely selected as I thought it would not only be a great extension for their literacy learning but also because of their maturity and work ethic. These students were all keen about commencing this work and their enthusiasm remained during all sessions.

The six students selected to take part in this trial … were chosen with an intention to extend their learning. These students are mature, capable and independent learners, which allowed them to thrive in this type of learning environment.

For the five days, students were very keen to work on this. Every morning they would ask me ‘Do we get to use Scootle today?’ All students had an individual computer to work on. They completed the tasks that were asked of them.

Teachers in the Trial were realistic about the amount of time that it took both themselves and their students to engage with and become comfortable with online collaboration.

Online collaboration

The Teacher Post‐Trial Survey included a range of teacher responses about the extent to which the collaborative learning activity they had developed contributed to students’ online collaboration. Some of these responses focused on only one aspect of the collaboration (eg Scootle Chat). Other teachers commented more broadly about whether their collaborative activity had facilitated student learning in small and large groups. A sample of these comments is included below.

Table 10: Teacher comments on students’ online collaboration

The novelty of chat (both for the learning task itself and the interactive nature of the project); the online resources; a learning task with a variety of entry points; and the ability to see how others were thinking and responding to their learning was highly significant and maintained student interest and thinking throughout.

Students were enthusiastic about being part of a ‘different’ learning experience from that they are used to. They worked well as a collaborative group, discussing all tasks and articulating their understanding. They asked questions of each other throughout the discussions.

There was a lot of verbal exchange in addition to online exchange. The chat [tool] was a real novelty that was misused, but I believe with a second opportunity it could be of assistance.

The students loved it. They were totally engaged. It was interesting to see different kids become interested in different tasks. They much preferred the tasks where they worked in groups of 2 or 3.

Small groups worked well in most cases, the newer, younger students needed the partner to give them confidence. One group of three (all girls) worried about possible fall‐out between friends and one opted to withdraw partway through to avoid this. It was at that point a perceived fear rather than an actuality. Some found the large group a little overwhelming but here the variety of support at their end dictated how well they managed, where support was strong and in‐tune students worked very well. All like collaborative learning and want to chat with peers – not always on the topic of course! They are intrigued by interacting with students in another location and are keen to do this.

I thought the collaborative learning task was an excellent vehicle for children to learn from and respond to each other in the learning with only a limited input from the teacher. They were observing the nature of one group’s


response and using it as a model for their own. As a teacher I questioned and challenged each group’s response to ensure that the content was fully explored – I did this online so all students could follow my guidance whether they had posted that response or not.

Students thoroughly enjoyed the experience and were engaged and motivated. They shared their ideas and the online comments enabled them to read and consider each other’s opinions.

The aspect of collaboration on which students were requested to comment in the Student Survey was whether they had helped each other to complete tasks. Most of the 108 responses replied in the affirmative. Most students found the collaboration useful when they needed help with difficult questions or language, while others noted that they worked collaboratively to solve a technical problem. Numerous responses referred to students’ used of Scootle Chat to ask questions and provide feedback.

None of the students referred to collaborative learning in terms of allocation or adoption of roles in order to have a team with complementary tasks working on an issue or problem, even though some teachers had constructed collaborative learning activities to achieve this.

Collaboration within the Trial was usually limited to students in single schools and, in most cases, the same year level. There were two exceptions to this. In School C, primary school students of different ages and from different classes collaborated on a single topic; School M used a distance learning approach, with students drawn from a number of primary and secondary schools. Collaboration between students in different classes within and across schools was judged by teachers in Schools C and M to be effective and has the potential to expand what is understood by collaborative online learning.

Learner engagement

The Teacher Post‐Trial Survey dealt with teacher perceptions of the quality of student engagement (question 11b), as well as the extent to which students spent ‘time‐on‐task’. Figures 11 and 12 below are drawn from the Teacher Post‐Trial Survey and the Student Survey.

Figure 11: Teacher perceptions of student engagement


Figure 12: Student perceptions of their own engagement

In responding to questions about engagement with the online learning experience, 100 per cent of teachers and about 85 per cent of students agreed that the online learning experience was engaging for students. This difference in perception may be due to a number of factors such as issues relating to bandwidth, the limited nature or difficulty of the tasks, and inexperience with learning or collaborating online.

More teachers commented upon the question about time‐on‐task than on the question relating to students’ overall engagement. Those teachers who did comment on student engagement made positive comments. Below is a representative sample of these comments.

Table 11: Teacher comments on student engagement

Engagement was high. Students found it an exciting way to work, but they still needed to talk things through a lot. It wasn’t a quiet workspace a lot of the time, but there was a lot of sharing of ideas and that was great.

They do like to learn using online interactive mediums.

During the initial commencing of the work, we did spend a recess time together discussing the requirements and styles of questions. The students quite happily gave of their time and participated extremely well.

All students loved the learning experience. They were very enthusiastic about it.

They were excited to participate and were highly motivated, even when there were glitches in the system.

Student comments about their own engagement were more specific. Sometimes these responses focused on the online learning environment. Other comments related specifically to the online learning experience (ie how they engaged with the learning design of the collaborative activity).

Table 12: Student comments on their own engagement

It was fairly boring conventional. Learning normally is better.

We should have more things to look at because we just looked at the same 8 toys for 5 hours.

It was all right but could use some improvement by making the activities more interactive.

I think it’s fun and it’s a good thing its safe and no strangers can find out about your personal details.

It was fun and the activities were pretty challenging. I also thought it was a good way to ask your friends for help.

It was a very interesting workspace and it was good to let people see your work.

I think I was engaged in Scootle Sandbox because we got to have heaps of fun while learning at the same time and we got to see what some of our classmates and some of the younger kids thought about the activity we were learning about.

I found this learning activity fun and it kept me involved. I never felt as if I was wasting my time. I liked doing this project because it helped me learn more and opened new doors and ideas.

One factor contributing to student criticism of the online learning experience may have been


the short time period available to teachers in the Trial to search for content and develop a collaborative learning activity. Further experience in using the medium to create more interesting and challenging collaborative learning activities may lead to more positive feelings by students about their own engagement with the content and the medium.

However, it should be noted that fewer than 15 per cent of students rated the learning experience ‘not engaging’.

Student ‘time‐on‐task’

While over 93 per cent of teachers agreed or strongly agreed that the students were engaged with the online learning experience, only about 66 per cent agreed or strongly agreed that students spent time‐on‐task. This difference of 27 percentile points may be due to factors such as management of online learning, design quality of the collaborative learning activity, and issues relating to the online learning environment.

Ultimately, management of students working in online learning environments is the responsibility of the teacher. For some teachers, particularly those in the Trial who had limited prior experience of managing online learning, this remained a factor.

Where the design of the collaborative learning activity was limited in scope, there was ample opportunity for some students to be less engaged in the learning experience. In some cases, teachers included too little work or work that lacked variety (eg simple comprehension questions) with predictable consequences for student engagement and time‐on‐task. In other cases, many students felt that the expectations were too high and became stressed as a result.

These are issues that would affect engagement and time‐on‐task in any class and can only be remedied by improved learning design, increased knowledge of student capability, and practice in developing effective collaborative learning activities for an online environment.

Many teachers commented in the Teacher Post‐Trial Survey about the impact of technology on the learning experience. While this will be more fully covered later, a sample of comments where teachers associated time‐on‐task issues with technology is listed below.

Table 13: Effects of technology on students’ ‘time‐on‐task’

Scootle Chat was sometimes a distraction.

‘Time on task’ was affected at the beginning with the novelty of the new online learning environment (particularly the chat component). We would not anticipate this being a problem as this learning situation becomes more familiar to the students.

This is a guess. Time‐on‐task was higher when support was immediate but as in any face‐to‐face class, when the teacher is not quite apparent, it flagged, not due necessarily to the task set – more to their own social agendas. They do like to learn using online interactive mediums.

Initially the presence of the Scootle Chat was all too distracting although perhaps that was my interpretation. It was definitely overused with inane chatter at times but at the same time the response rate and quality was maintained. After a while I was able to accept the social chatter (to an extent) and use it to probe more in‐depth responses from the children once they had posted.

As stated above the student responses do not adequately reflect their ‘on‐task’ thinking. Certainly, none of my students had ever done anything like this and so it was all new and exciting. Each time they worked on Scootle [Sandbox] they achieved more and used more effectively tools that had previously been a distraction.

I think time‐on‐task improved over the weeks. I believe time‐off‐task was due to excitement, being distracted by new options such as chat, getting used to setting their own pace and initial software issues. I don’t feel time‐off‐task was due to lack of interest. As kids become familiar with Scootle [Sandbox] and I set tasks more suitable for the software, I would expect time‐off‐task to decrease.


Learning outcomes

A number of questions in the Teacher Post‐Trial Survey and the Student Survey sought to ascertain the learning outcomes of the collaborative activities.

When teachers were describing the student work that was created within a collaborative learning activity, some defined the outcomes in terms of participation and skills, while others had clear objectives about what students should produce either individually or collaboratively. A typical response that describes learning outcomes in terms of both participation and outputs was: ‘In this activity, students posted comments in the live workspace. They commented on the pictures. They took a different perspective and wrote a description of how to play a game. They rewrote one of the descriptions if they felt it necessary. They kept a notebook to use for note taking from a video clip. They chatted using the chat function’.

A clear set of expectations is also evident in Model 2 – ‘Who do they think we are?’ (Appendix 2.2) and Model 3 – ‘Aboriginal visual stories’ (Appendix 2.3). The primary school teacher who designed Model 2 had a number of specific outputs in mind. The teacher was able to describe the student learning outcomes as: ‘Shirt designed for 2010 Commonwealth games using Word or PowerPoint. Some used SMART Board software but the file could not be uploaded. [Students] designed a new $200 note. Class survey on most valuable invention. Vote taken after students researched inventions’.

A number of students not only specified the outcomes but also evaluated them. A sample is provided below.

Table 14: Student comments on learning outcomes

We didn’t do very much as we had to read a lot of writing.

It was good work. It made me think. But it was the same work as usual: Q&A.

We basically just added comments and we used the chat but I would be happy to try harder work or more different work.

I made a [Plus‐Minus‐Interesting] PMI chart about immigration in Australia. Also text responses and a collage.

We created things such as PowerPoints and movies but found we couldn’t upload them.

We answered questions, created role‐plays and scenarios and described paintings.

After completing the Scootle [Sandbox] trial I drew a cartoon showing an example of gender stereotyping and scanned it onto the computer. I also commented on my friends’ cartoons.

Wrote a letter with a partner. Imported a picture of the Australian outback. Art analysis. Interpreted sayings. Made comments. Located information. Searched for information on the internet. Listed difficulties. Examination. Created new rules.

It is clear that students commented on different outputs from those identified by teachers. Many students felt that a lot of the work involved answering textbook‐like questions about a digital resource that might just as easily have been completed on paper in a normal class. Clearly, when teachers are creating collaborative learning activities they need to think about the online learning experience as an opportunity for students to see things that they would not otherwise be able to see. But they also need to set tasks that suit the online environment, rather than tasks that are identical to normal classroom work.


Evaluation of learning outcomes Scootle Sandbox, the online learning environment used in the School Trial, included evaluation tools that Scootle alone lacked. The teacher and student surveys used in the Trial included questions about these tools, both to identify which tools were useful or nor useful, and to assess whether Scootle Sandbox should provide tools for evaluation at all.

Assessment of learning within the Trial

Teachers participating in the Trial were not required to assess students. A number of teachers noted this in their responses to questions relating to assessment, indicating that the short duration of the Trial and the fact that students were engaging with unfamiliar software made assessment unimportant or irrelevant. For those teachers who were confident about making an assessment of student learning outcomes, the approach used depended on a range of factors.

Three models of assessment were observed in the Trial:

In the first model, where the teaching and the learning were asynchronous, the teacher devised the collaborative activity, the students completed the activity at different times, and the teacher assessed each student’s contributions and outputs at a later stage. This model was akin to a traditional distance‐learning approach, although its use was not limited to distance learning. It was also used in a face‐to‐face learning situation (eg where the teacher was teaching the main group while a small number of students completed the activity on computers in the classroom).

In the second model, teaching and learning were synchronous. The teacher moved around the room, assisting, encouraging or managing a small group or a class. In this second model, teachers could observe the quality of an individual’s or group’s participation and responses. They could provide online feedback between sessions or at the completion of a sequence of sessions.

In the third model, the teacher participated in the activity along with the students by using their own computer to engage in a chat session or to provide responses to student comments. Within this model, teachers could provide live feedback to individuals and groups.

Across the schools involved in the Trial, teachers provided feedback and assessment using elements of each model. As more teachers become familiar with using the online learning environment they will inevitably gain more confidence in using each model.

Formative and summative assessment

Formative and summative assessment both require a clear set of criteria to evaluate whether students have completed a task to a particular level.

Teachers in Australian schools are familiar with how to establish criteria and develop rubrics that are relevant to the learning activity. Evaluation criteria will necessarily consider completion of a learning outcome through the assessment of a finished product (eg a banknote design, a Commonwealth Games shirt design or a visual story). These are examples of summative assessment.

However, a more expansive understanding of assessment includes an evaluation of the process, that is, formative assessment.

Three examples in which teachers referred to the criteria they were using to assess students are included below.


Table 15: Assessment criteria

A student’s ability to:

Undertake historical inquiries; Acquire information; Critically examine information; Communicate information.

Interpret texts: Construct written electronic texts for an audience.

To assess how the students were going and what value they were gaining from this learning, I simply used their written responses and critiqued how they were progressing individually. Their comments showed how their understanding, application and capabilities were developing. The chat [tool] also … [helped me to] see who was asking what kinds of questions and who was responding to them.

I was especially looking for the type of language students used – hope, optimism, caring – but more their ability to put themselves in other people’s shoes. Use of imagination in a real way was important. We’ve co‐constructed a rubric to assess by, but we haven’t used it as yet. An ability to work collaboratively was important and to ask for help to clarify understanding. Using different mediums to respond to tasks was also a criterion as was the ability to construct clear, logical and thoughtful responses.

In the first example, the teacher uses standards or learning outcomes as criteria. This is an example of summative assessment. In the second example, the teacher assesses process and product in order to develop a summative assessment. The rubrics referred to in the third example would enable either formative or summative assessment.

Within the Trial, very few teachers developed criteria that assessed the development by students of skills in collaboration or in the use of the online environment for learning.

Peer assessment

Fifty per cent of the teachers stated that they had not included peer assessment in their collaborative learning activity. This figure is probably not quite accurate, as most completed activities had examples of students providing informal feedback to their peers through comments or within the chat tool. A number of teachers noted that the software provided opportunities for peer assessment to occur in future (eg ‘This was limited in my pathway but I can see that this could be built into the live workspace’).

Online assessment tools

A number of new tools had been developed within the online learning environment for teachers to make individual and group assessments. The use of these tools was not described in the Scootle User Guide for Teachers, nor were they modelled in the Preliminary Workshop. While they were demonstrated to a number of the teachers on school visits, some teachers discovered and used these tools independently.

The tools for assessment were based on the teacher responding to work or a comment produced by a student identified by an avatar. In most cases, while the identity of the student using the avatars was supposed to remain unknown, teachers found it useful to know who was who.

The chat tool could also be used to provide assessment and feedback.

Figure 13 shows the intended use of the online assessment tools within Scootle Sandbox.

Figure 13: Online assessment tools

Activity log Feedback options Group feedback Individual feedback

1 2 3 4

Teacher views the ‘Activity log’

Teacher decides to provide ‘Feedback’

Teacher selects ‘Add feedback’ for the entire group, during or after a

Teacher selects ‘Add feedback’ for an individual, during or


session, using a web form

after a session, using a web form

The log lists the date/time, the participant, and the action.

‘Feedback’ is located on a tab at the top of the live workspace. Feedback can be provided to a whole group or to an individual.

The web form includes three text fields: ‘Group assessment’, ‘Comment’ and ‘Feedback’. Teacher feedback appears in the group’s live workspace and is seen by all students.

The web form includes a single text field called ‘Feedback’. Feedback can only be seen by the actual student within their personal live workspace.

Explanation

Teachers provided feedback in the Teacher Post‐Trial Survey about the effectiveness of these new tools. The feedback needs to be viewed in the light of the issues described above.

Figure 14: Teachers’ responses to online assessment tools

The activity log

The activity log listed all dates and times when student avatars modified their personal live workspace. When a teacher checked the activity log they saw the date and time at which each participant modified the space. This information was arranged in date order. Students were identified by avatar name and access code. Their actions were also noted (eg ‘Updated text’, ‘Added comment’).

Some teachers remained unaware of the activity log. Teachers who tried to use it as an assessment tool provided the following comments.

Table 16: Teacher comments on the activity log

The activity log was hard to follow and didn’t really tell you which students completed which activities.

The activity log showed me their levels of participation. I really required a function that would let me see an individual student’s responses grouped together. This would have been really effective.

The activity log would have been more useful if it could have been searchable by user and showed the activity, not just a record of it.


I liked being able to check the activity log but wanted the option to see anything which had been removed as this may have been valid work that a student removed when it would have been better left.

The activity log was useful to see who was updating their work, how many times and when.

Individual feedback

Teachers could provide online feedback to an individual student. Fifty‐seven per cent of teachers in the sample agreed or strongly agreed that this was the most interesting tool for assessment in Scootle Sandbox.

When a teacher wished to provide specific feedback to an individual they used a single web form that could only be seen by the student. One teacher made the following comment about this tool: ‘if I had been using just this option I would have found both group and individual feedback options essential and very useful’.

Group feedback

Teachers could provide group feedback online. This would be added to the group’s live workspace as a ‘Group assessment’, ‘Comment’ or ‘Feedback’. Thirty‐eight per cent of teachers agreed or strongly agreed that this was a useful tool. An analysis of completed collaborative learning activities indicates that this would have been a useful tool for teacher feedback if it had been more extensively known about or used. The favourable comment above regarding individual feedback also applies to this tool.

Chat tool

Very few teachers were impressed by the potential of the chat tool for use in formative assessment. This may have been due to some teachers’ inability to maintain a complete record of the chat so that they could analyse student interaction at a later date. While the chat tool may have been more frequently used for social interaction, two major exceptions to this occurred: on one occasion, in the distance education model, the teacher did not participate synchronously in the collaborative activity. In this case, the secondary students used the chat tool in a highly effective way to discuss the group tasks they had been set relating to Indigenous artworks and visual stories; the second occasion was in a primary school, the teach was interacting synchronously in the collaborative actively, and the tool was being successfully used to facilitate the organisation of ideas and learning.

Two of the teachers who were engaging synchronously with the students in the collaborative activity endorsed the use of chat for providing quick feedback.


The online learning environment According to Crook et al, Web 2.0 can influence four main areas of education: ‘inquiry’, ‘literacies’, ‘collaboration’ and ‘publication’. They contend that ‘using Web 2.0 tools and practices invites new ways for a learner to conduct personal research’ (ie inquiry). They define literacies as: ‘[how] individuals … learn to represent and communicate events and ideas outside their natural context … Digital media expand this tradition by offering new modes of representation and expression’. They suggest that ‘Web 2.0 offers educators a set of tools to support forms of learning that can be more strongly collaborative and more oriented to the building of classroom communities’. Finally, they argue that Web 2.0 allows students to ‘submit the products of their study’ (Crook et al 2008, pp 27–8).

In defining what can be included in Web 2.0 tools and practices, Crook et al contend that the major categories of activity can include trading, media sharing, media manipulation, data and web ‘mashups’, conversational arenas, online games and virtual worlds, social networking, blogging, social bookmarking, recommender systems, collaborative editing, wikis and syndication (Crook et al 2008, pp 9–15).

Within the time constraints of the project, the publishing environment TLF used for distributing learning objects and digital resources (ie Scootle) was adapted to incorporate those Web 2.0 technologies that were deemed to be immediately relevant to online collaborative learning. The online learning environment developed elements of media sharing, conversational arenas, online games and virtual worlds, and wikis.

The data relating to the online learning environment is drawn from the Teacher Post‐Trial Survey and the Student Survey. A single question in each survey was designed to test the validity of each group’s perceptions. This data provides information about engagement with the online learning environment, the effectiveness of the environment, the achievement of student learning outcomes, and the nature and extent of collaboration between students.

Perceptions of the online environment

Figure 15: Teacher perceptions of the online learning environment

Of the respondents, 80 per cent agreed or strongly agreed that their students found the online learning environment engaging. Over 70 per cent of teachers believed that the experience stimulated learning and a similar percentage believed it helped students achieve learning outcomes. A slightly smaller proportion believed that the learning experience


helped students to work collaboratively and 60 per cent believed it had an easy‐to‐use interface.

Some teachers in the sample (about 20–28 per cent) had doubts as to whether the online learning environment was engaging, effective or facilitated collaboration and the achievement of learning outcomes. The least positive responses related to the ease of use of the ‘interface’ (ie Scootle Sandbox). All but one of the five comments provided by teachers in response to this question focused on the interface.

Figure 16: Student perceptions of the online learning environment

A divergence in the perceptions of teachers and students that is most noticeable, and perhaps predictable, occurs in responses to the question relating to the ease of use of the interface. Figure 16 above shows that, of the students, almost 74 per cent rated the interface as easy to use. Over 71 per cent of students also recognised that the online learning environment assisted collaboration. These were the highest scores within this segment of the Student Survey. Otherwise, the ratings of the online learning environment were more diverse within the student sample.

Given this spread, about 60–67 per cent of students agreed or strongly agreed that the online learning environment was engaging, effective, stimulated learning, or helped them to achieve learning outcomes. Thirty‐six of the students in the sample used the opportunity to comment on this question. Responses ranged from ‘I don’t get it’ to ‘This was easy to use and understand’ and ‘When I was on Scootle [Sandbox] I was so focused that I blocked out every other sound’. It was sometimes difficult to distinguish student comments about the online learning environment from those relating to the teacher’s design of the collaborative learning activity.

The collaborative workspace

The online learning environment used in the Trial, Scootle Sandbox, is an extension of the widely used Scootle publishing environment that has been made available to schools and teachers with the approval of their governing jurisdiction. Scootle software essentially allows teachers to discover and access TLF‐approved or developed content (learning objects, digital resources). Every user can search for, select and save content to a learning pathway. Scootle provides some of the same tools to which users of Scootle Sandbox have access (eg ‘Search’, ‘Advanced search’, ‘Find on a map’, ‘Find on a timeline’). In contrast to Scootle Sandbox it does not enable collaboration.


The collaborative workspace allowed teachers to select, sequence and develop a collaborative activity in which students could participate. When students were provided with PINs that enabled them to join a collaborative activity, they were required to select a name and avatar that identified them to the teacher and to each other during the activity. If a teacher set up more than one collaborative activity, the student avatars had to be reselected.

The main screen that the teacher and each student viewed in Scootle Sandbox was the ‘Live workspace’, which included Scootle Chat. Tabs at the top of the live workspace allowed teachers to select ‘Prepare an activity’, the ‘Live workspace’, ‘Feedback’ and the ‘Activity log’. The live workspace allowed the teacher and the students to interact with the collaborative activity created by the teacher. Students participating in a collaborative activity could view digital resources, move content around within the live workspace, add comments and upload new files.

In the Teacher Post‐Trial Survey, participants were requested to evaluate whether the online environment was suited to their students’ age and stage of schooling. Of the participants, 100 per cent agreed that it was. (The age range represented within the Trial was Year 3 to Year 10.)

Creating a collaborative learning activity

When creating a collaborative activity within the online environment, teachers could add comments at the beginning of the sequence of resources. These comments could be dragged to a particular position in the collaborative learning activity (ie following an individual resource or a group of resources). Limited advice about pedagogy was provided to teachers who had to ‘Prepare an activity’.

Advice about labelling or numbering tasks for students might have led to more effectively structured and sequenced activities. Those teachers who numbered the parts of the activity with titles such as ‘Task 1’ (see models 1 and 2, Appendix 2.1 and 2.2) provided a clear framework for students to scaffold their learning throughout the activity. While an absence of numbering might have enabled students to move in and out of an activity as their skills and interests allow, the end result of an unnumbered activity was that all the parts became muddled if students resequenced the activity.

Using a collaborative learning activity

Some students engaged with a collaborative learning activity that included only one digital resource, such as Model 3 (Appendix 2.3). At the other end of the scale, some students were responding to activities that included up to 12 resources, such as Model 2 (Appendix 2.2). The number of resources and amount of teacher instructions included within the live workspace of an activity seems to have had significant impacts on the useability of the interface.

An analysis of completed collaborative learning activities indicates that students were able to interact and collaborate in very detailed collaborative learning activities that included many digital resources and tasks. However, the number of comments students made in the live workspace often meant that an originally compact learning design ‘blew out’ to many onscreen pages. This required students to scroll endlessly in order to find a resource, an instruction or another student’s comments. One teacher commented that: ‘The length of the live workspace seems to be an issue. Kids complained about having to scroll so far down a page to find a task’.

One collaborative learning activity, developed for primary school students, included the resources, instructions, and student and teacher comments shown in the table below.


Table 17: Analysis of student–teacher interactions in one live workspace example

Element Comment

6 Digital resources

The titles and descriptions of the six digital resources were unaltered from those provided by museums.

2 Teacher instructions

These appeared directly after two of the resources. They were approximately 16 lines in length. They included comments and tasks.

2 Teacher questions and tasks

These ‘floated’ in the student‐resequenced activity. They were between 4 and 12 lines in length.

6 Teacher comments

These ‘floated’ in the student‐resequenced activity. They were between 6 and 27 lines in length. The average length was 12 lines. Comments included tasks and questions.

1 Teacher file This was a PMI chart.

2 Student text Text files were interchangeable with comments files. The text files were not associated with a ‘nick’ or avatar. They ‘floated’ in the student re‐sequenced activity.

67 Student comments

11 student avatars contributed between 1 and 13 comments in the live workspace. The breakdown was 1–1, 3–3, 5–3, 6–1, 11–1, 12–1 and 13–1 (where the first number indicates the number of comments and the second number indicates the number of students). The length of comments varied from 1 to 20 lines. Student comments were an average of five lines in length.

16 Student file These were both text (eg a script) and image (eg a photo) files.

TOTAL 102 A printout of the completed collaborative activity was 22 pages in length.

This collaborative learning activity comprised 22 pages printed out, and would have been the equivalent of many more scrolling screens. These pages and screens did not take account of the student (and teacher) input into the chat.

What was missing from the completed activity was also revealing. The live workspace had the capacity to allow students to develop a wiki about an individual resource. This could occur if a teacher instructed a group of students to modify jointly, or add to the description field of, a digital resource. That the students in this school did not do so is representative of the experience of most schools in the Trial.

Generally, the number of digital resources, the quantity of teacher questions and comments, and the number of student comments did not appear to affect the quality of the learning experience, even though it may have made it unnecessarily complicated. Having said this, it is apparent that teachers need more guidance about the optimum number of resources to use in an activity, the number of tasks that are legitimate (and how to label those tasks), the wiki capability, and what to advise students about the purpose of the ‘Comments’ field.

Table 17 above refers to ‘floating’ questions and tasks, comments and text. When a student wishes to add text, a comment or a file, the added object appears at the top of the live workspace. Students are asked to drag and drop their object to the appropriate place (eg under a resource or task) in the live workspace. This creates confusion within a collaborative activity because when it becomes too long, students need to scroll through many screens to find the right spot. If students resequence the parts of the activity within their own workspace, this new resequencing appears on all workspaces. This was an undesirable feature. Teachers and students clearly need their instructions, questions, responses and files ‘anchored’ to the relevant part of a collaborative activity.

The issue of file uploads was critical for a number of schools. Teachers and students were asked to identify the external software that students had used to upload additional material for the collaborative learning activity. Teacher perceptions of the file types students had created and uploaded for this purpose is shown below.


Figure 17: Creation and upload of student‐created materials

These statistics differ from those derived from the Student Survey. Students identified that they had created and uploaded MS Word documents (71.3 per cent), MS Excel files (2.8 per cent), MS PowerPoint presentations (10.2 per cent), images (45.4 per cent) and sound files (1.9 per cent).

Students made particular note of files that they tried to upload but that the online learning environment could not accept. These included movie files, MS PowerPoint files and ‘game’ files. Specific comments made by student relating to file upload difficulties included the following.

Table 18: Uploading files to Scootle Sandbox

I tried to upload game and movie files with sound but it did not work.

We created something in ArtRage but we couldn’t upload it.

Yes, created in Paint but we could not upload them.

For the image I had to upload the image on the attach file but you had to write your comment there as well which got confusing, and also that you had to save the photo. You couldn’t copy and paste.

We did something on notebook but it did not upload.

Perceptions of the interactive and collaborative features

As a trial version of collaboration software, the Scootle Sandbox online learning environment included only those interactive functions and features that could be integrated in the time allowed, or that were judged to be easily useable by teachers and students.

Teachers were provided with functions and features that allowed them to search for, select and describe resources. They could resequence resources and add tasks for students that guided them in the activity. Individual and group feedback tools were also provided.

Students were provided with functions and features that were believed to be age‐appropriate and suited to educational collaboration. Students could select an avatar, respond to digital resources and tasks within the live workspace, comment on each other’s contributions, participate in chat relevant to the activity, sequence and resequence the live workspace, view individual and group feedback from the teacher, and upload files.


Two questions in the Teacher Post‐Trial Survey and one question in the Student Survey specifically focused on the effectiveness of the toolset, including the collaborative functions and features. Responses to the first question on toolset effectiveness in the Teacher Post‐Trial Survey are shown below.

Figure 18: Teacher perceptions of the usefulness of the tools in Scootle Sandbox

The Student Survey included a comparable question about the toolset. This enables us to compare teacher and student views. Responses to the Student Survey question are shown below.

Figure 19: Student perceptions of the usefulness of the tools in Scootle Sandbox

There is a greater spread of agreement and disagreement about the value of the toolset in the Student Survey. The ranking of tools also differs. Whereas teachers ‘agreed’ or ‘strongly agreed’ that the collaborative learning activity was useful (about 85 per cent), students in contrast saw chat as the most interesting tool (about 76 per cent). Both students and teachers considered the timeline and map tools to be of limited value, and teachers were able to comment on some of the reasons for this. The student rankings may be explainable by students’ familiarity with certain tools, the fact that some are immediately accessible and exciting, and the possibility that the teacher‐designed collaborative learning activity did not include particular tools.


Table 19: Teacher perceptions of the usefulness of the Scootle Sandbox tools

I used the search facilities but my students did not. That was the design of my collaborative activity. I loved the idea of the map and timeline facility but I found so few objects connected. I would use the feedback facility more as my students became more comfortable with the style of learning.

We found the timeline and map to be too much of a ‘trial and error’ method of searching whereas the more traditional search options (basic and advanced) yielded better results. The students were a little side‐tracked when using the chat [tool].

I can see that the feedback facility would be great if there was enough time and if I didn’t have the whole class working on it at the same time. I guess we tailor things to suit our immediate need, which is not to say that we wouldn’t do it differently next time under different circumstances. The time factor was very restrictive.

A reading of the student responses to the question about the value of the toolset confirms that both the positive and negative responses were highly influenced by the learning design of the collaborative activity. Student comments about the search, map and timeline tools included: ‘We didn’t do anything to do with map or timeline’; and ‘We didn’t end up using search, timeline or the map’. With one exception all the students who commented on the Chat tool approved of it as a collaborative tool.

Opportunities

Both the Teacher Post‐Trial Survey and the Student Survey invited participants to comment on or identify what they thought could make the collaborative tools better. Only actual suggestions are included below, and not general comments of approval. Some of these suggestions refer to the interface or the live workspace rather than the collaborative toolset.

Table 20: Teacher views about how to improve the tools in Scootle Sandbox

Better organisation of the page. Tabs for separate tasks. The ability to view individual student’s activities.

The collaborative activity needs to order and store comments more effectively. It’s too much on screen as it is. Teacher tasks maybe could have a section of their own? You should be able to search by TLF‐ID number.

Threaded conversations in chat and threaded comments in the collaborative activity, allowing the discussion to be collapsed. The length of the live workspace seems to be an issue. Kids complained about having to scroll so far down a page to find a task.

As mentioned earlier, a function to enable you to view all of one particular student’s responses. Being able to print out the chat.

Being able to upload different types of files.

The Map tool: You would need all the resources to be linked to the map as we often found the resources were not linked and therefore it was a useless search option. Chat: All ‘characters’ to work in the chat environment (eg apostrophes).

Student comments were much more focused on the actual collaborative toolset. In addition to commenting on specific tools, students were able to specify that advice about the use of tools would also be useful. Other students commented on the use of avatars and technical bugs in the chat tool.

Table 21: Student views about how to improve the tools in Scootle Sandbox

Something that directs us to use them [the tools] and to know that they are there.

It would be better if the avatars didn’t change.

We reckon that it should have more than one page instead of scrolling down all the way to the bottom.

Having your own WordPad program rather than having to attach files from other programs.

Letting you upload more things other than Word documents, PowerPoints etc.


Maybe having a list of everyone online so we can choose who to talk to instead of everyone

With the chat it would be better if it didn’t keep freezing every time you wrote something; and every time you did an apostrophe it said ‘apost&apost’. It was annoying.

Chat: show more than the last 10 or so messages

A spell check

A limited number of collaborative tools, as well as associated, non‐collaborative tools such as the map and the timeline, were made available in the version of Scootle Sandbox developed for the School Trial. Earlier sections of this report about learning design indicated that teachers needed more assistance in developing collaborative learning activities that took account of and used pedagogical frameworks as well as teaching and learning strategies.

A range of collaborative tools that encourage higher‐order and collaborative thinking could be incorporated into future versions of Scootle Sandbox. An example of such a toolset is provided by Futurelab UK on the exploratree website (www.exploratree.org.uk/). The exploratree online tools allow teachers and students to map, explore and analyse ideas; solve problems; and investigate different perspectives. If comparable collaborative learning tools were added to Scootle Sandbox, the teacher could insert them in the collaborative activity.

The other opportunity for developing collaboration relates to the use of a wiki, as mentioned above. This could be encouraged using current functionality, such as when teachers and students use the description field. Another option is for students to collaborate on a part of the live workspace, or an attached file, in groups or as a class.

Conclusion When asked to reflect on the value of working on activities collaboratively, 82 per cent of students gave a rating of between 7 and 10, out of a possible 10 points. Only eight per cent of students gave this way of working a negative rating. Over 92 per cent of teachers similarly believed that the online learning environment and its collaborative tools assisted student learning.

Given this strong endorsement, it is possible to identify options and recommendations for improving the use by teachers and students of digital resources, the online learning environment and its collaborative toolset. These are grouped under the major headings of this report: procurement; quality assurance; curriculum content; learning design; the learning experience; evaluation of learning outcomes; and the online learning environment.


Discussion The new procurement, quality assurance (QA) process and delivery platform designed for the M&EDCE project has raised issues and options for the future.

The new procurement model involved the museums selecting a digitised resource and creating or enhancing metadata for that resource. This metadata could be kept within the museum’s own repository and shared with other repositories. All that was provided to TLF in this business model was the metadata. This was harvested by the Metadata Harvester, providing links back to the actual objects on the museum websites.

The QA model used in the project aimed to minimise the double handling of data by museum and TLF personnel, and by those organisations’ systems. Instead of using the previous model, whereby TLF staff managed the creation of the digital resource, museums in this project provided the title, description, an educational value statement, temporal and spatial metadata, keywords and additional data about the resource.

The model used to disseminate the material to the school sector allowed teachers to search for, select and sequence digital resources within an online learning space that enabled students to interact and collaborate with their peers. This collaborative model was designed to elicit innovative ways of teaching and learning online that had previously been unavailable.

While the model trialled in the project met requirements relating to efficiency and cost, the discussion and subsequent recommendations in this section explore potential improvements to aspects of procurement, QA, and distribution within the model.

Procurement

Content selection and the National Curriculum

The Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs has agreed to a National Curriculum that includes the Arts, English, Geography, History, Languages, Mathematics and the Sciences. Within this set of learning areas, framing papers have been published and the writing of curriculums for English, History, Mathematics and Science initiated. These learning areas will allow TLF and education jurisdictions and sectors to advise cultural organisations about providing appropriate online digital collections to enhance teaching and learning.

In the procurement model used, the three museums selected, from their collections, digitised items and descriptions based on what they considered to be valuable as well as on advice received from TLF about national curriculum priorities.

The curriculum priorities that were used to inform the selection of content for this project revolved around the key areas of the National Curriculum. An analysis of content within the national Statements of Learning for English (MCEETYA 2005B), Civics and Citizenship, ICT, Mathematics and Science (MCEETYA 2006A, 2006B, 2006C, 2006D) was used to provide more specific advice.

In the School Trial component of the project, a range of curriculum topics (eg the Gold Rush) were used at a number of year levels in both primary and secondary schools. The new National Curriculum provides clear guidelines for the study of topics at particular levels. For example, at years 3–6 the History curriculum will contain (among other topics) ‘pre‐ and post‐ Indigenous and European contact’. This means that the new national curriculums will enable TLF and other sector bodies to advise cultural organisations about the particular


areas in which digital collections could best be developed. With greater guidance from jurisdictions and sectors through TLF, there is significant potential for cultural organisations to develop a number of high‐quality complementary collections (eg traditional and contemporary Indigenous works).

Resource formats

A number of teachers within the School Trial were familiar with and have used, for teaching and learning purposes, learning objects and digital resources published by TLF. The former are highly interactive and the latter include interactive elements, animations, digitised illustrations, photographs and paintings, as well as text, video and audio files. Due to the constraints of time, and sometimes of IP, the files the museums provided within the project were largely limited to still images. While students could respond to these for the purposes of the Trial, it was assumed that providing a wider range of media type, as does the national pool, would be beneficial.

Access to museum websites

A new aspect of the model used in the project was that the digitised resource remained as a museum asset. This asset was then accessed by teachers and students on the museum website.

This arrangement raises two issues relating to accessibility and sustainability:

Whether websites are accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week depends on the capacity of museums. This assumes the existence of necessary infrastructure and other support resources

The cost of downloads is borne by schools and individual users, and this could prove to be prohibitive depending on school internet access arrangements and policies.

Download traffic was not a major issue within the project, although expansion into audio and visual streaming or downloading, the focus of the National Film and Sound Archive’s australianscreen project, suggests that capacity will be a greater issue in the future.

The resource and its descriptive metadata

Teachers and students accessed selected metadata records of the digital resources through Scootle Sandbox. To see the actual digital resource, they clicked through to one of the museum websites, where they were also able to view the title, description and other contextual information created by museum staff.

While there were issues relating to the sometimes technical nature of descriptive text, users were generally able to work with the resource and the associated metadata records.

The educational value statements were originally written by museums, not necessarily with a particular audience in mind, although during TLF’s QA process they were edited to suit a teacher audience. There was value in the museums developing these statements to accompany the digital resources, as long as the statements were enhanced by TLF: educational value depends on the needs of the user, and TLF is very well placed to add value by meeting the requirements of this audience. These needs may be as diverse as those of students in primary school, those of university students, or those of primary and secondary teachers in more than one educational jurisdiction.

In order to cater for multiple audiences with multiple educational needs (ie the general public as well as schools), museums could confine what is seen by the user, when they access the museum website, to the digitised resource, the title and a short description –


leaving the education context to be explored by teachers using TLF delivery systems. This highlights the importance of good titles and descriptions in facilitating discovery and use of the resource –these may be the only elements teachers or students read to select a digital resource.

Provision of metadata

The procurement process used in the project included the writing of metadata about each resource. Metadata included terms defined by the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) that could be mapped, in most cases, to the ANZ‐LOM application profile used by TLF and the school education sector. If cultural organisations write their own metadata and use it only on their own websites, issues relating to quality are relevant only to the organisation. When sharing metadata with another organisation, however, issues relating to conformance and interoperability come into play. A number of such issues arose within the business model used in the project.

Accuracy must be the responsibility of the organisation providing the metadata. If the Simple Dublin Core Metadata Element Set (DCMES) is used across the cultural organisations sector, organisations need to ensure that metadata conforms to the relevant standard. Conformity would also allow cultural organisations to share and store metadata in central repositories that a number of other repositories could then access.

It is not viable for cultural organisations to employ or use staff to adapt data based on Dublin Core for the school, VET or higher education sectors, who each use a different metadata standard. When a sector wishes to reach an agreement with a cultural organisation for particular resources and metadata to be discoverable within their portals, it should be the responsibility of the sector to add additional metadata as required. TLF is well placed to provide this value‐add service.

Under such a procurement model, there might be a danger of an end user viewing contradictory metadata about a resource. This would particularly occur if there were different values accorded in fields such as ‘DC coverage’, ‘DC date’, ‘DC description’ and ‘DC title’. Within the School Trial, the ‘description’ and ‘title’ fields were usually viewed both in TLF’s online environment and on the museum website, and there was a risk of the content of these fields differing between the two sites. (While ‘coverage’ and ‘date’ are not separately viewed on a museum web page, they can be viewed using spatial and temporal tools in TLF’s online learning environment.)

Systems

The M&EDCE project can provide a model for future thinking about digitisation projects within and across museums, and how the outputs of such projects can be shared.

In such a model, cultural organisations, working individually or as a group, could define and build collections areas for future digital resources. These collections could potentially include thousands of resources, and would include the digital resources described using either Simple Dublin Core or Dublin Core Extended. The metadata describing the resources would need to be in a form that could be harvested. A group of museums could share this metadata with another museum, or a repository or aggregator controlled by the museums.

Museums and education jurisdictions or sectors would agree to licence terms and conditions for the use of particular resources or collections and for the harvesting of museum‐created metadata about these. The jurisdiction or sector would validate and provide feedback on (ie ‘exchange’) the metadata and add additional metadata that met the needs of its constituents (eg thesaurus terms). Using this model, further user feedback and usage


statistics would be easy for museums to obtain and control, as objects would remain on the museum websites.

The jurisdiction or sector would measure the use of the resource by its constituents, and use this information to request additional resources in particular areas. It would draw upon the knowledge and experience of groups within itself (eg museum education committees or subject associations) to request new resources or new resource areas. Where feasible, these groups would mediate sector needs and the requests of individual users or groups of users for additional digital resources.

Jurisdictions and sectors could distribute licensed resources through their own delivery platforms and encourage users to contribute data about the resource.

Quality assurance The simplified QA process developed for the project raised a number of issues about what is meant by quality; the management of IP; the value of the ‘metadata exchange’; and the QA process itself.

There were inevitably going to be instances where the revised QA process required modification. These may have been due to expectations about the museums’ capacity to provide quality metadata or due to new systems being trialled. While the revised QA process worked and was efficient, modifications need to be scoped and adopted based on the experience of the museums and TLF in conducting the project.

The main tensions arose over the definition of quality, given the intended audience. These occurred throughout the process, from selection of appropriate content through to the describing of content and its suitability for education use.

Quality of metadata

In the devolved model used in the project, it was predictable that issues arose about how to ensure that the metadata provided by the museums was of a consistent quality.

The question of quality was raised in terms of accuracy, interest value, and relevance to teachers and their students.

The title, description and educational value statements – all provided by the museums – did occasionally include inaccurate or inappropriate expressions or information. The education context in particular, which was often sourced from the museum’s statement of significance, historical notes or equivalent, consistently required reworking by TLF educators. These educators completed fact checking; ensured a consistent language within and between digital resources; and edited descriptions and educational value statements to suit the audience. Teachers generally appeared to assume that the background material provided with the items would be accurate, given their source.

Although it was considered very valuable for the metadata to be drawn directly from the museums, and it was deemed the responsibility of the cultural organisation to ensure accuracy and relevance, it was also valuable to maintain TLF QA process as an ‘extra set of eyes’ focused on the specific needs of end users.

Another opportunity for TLF to add value was the addition of the key spatial and temporal information, which enabled these resources to be discoverable by users. This was because the delivery platform used by TLF allows users to access information about the digital resource using a map or timeline tool. This would have catered for spatial learners, enabling them to be more aware of context. Spatial and temporal metadata proved to be a challenge in the Trial, with exchanges between TLF and participating museums appropriately focusing


on issues relating to the incapacity of ANZ‐LOM to deal with year or ‘circa’ dates. The issues relating to when the object was created, used or found can be resolved by following Dublin Core guidelines.

Intellectual property

The management of IP has been a major consideration in this project. Copyright can cause obstructions and delays sourcing content. In addition, where users are accessing this content online, and copying, communicating, and publishing in a Web 2.0 education context, numerous issues arise concerning conditions of use.

One of TLF’s roles, in working with museums and other collections‐based organisations, is to communicate the specific needs of education with regard to copyright in order to ensure an adequate font of resources to schools. This project aimed to make a large number of significant resources available to Australian educators to use freely, as well as to simplify access, enabling schools to access the materials directly on the museum websites. A key requirement is for TLF to ensure that the use of such resources by schools does not require ongoing payment to collecting societies.

Even though the content was to remain on the museum websites, the selection of satisfactory content was limited in many cases by the existing licensing terms. When selecting resources, museum staff considered the relevance of the item and its intended use by schools for educational purposes in an online collaborative environment. One way to speed up the permissions process is for museums to consider including the licence terms directly in their permissions letters and acquisition processes.

Wherever possible, museums were required to obtain licences that permitted modification of third‐party copyright material in educational settings. This was to account for the remixing scenarios that students could carry out in the Web 2.0 workspace. However, when licensing artistic works for the project (Papunya paintings and cartoons), the National Museum of Australia found that copyright holders were not prepared to grant permission for modifications to occur.

Ideally, a more streamlined process would involve a spectrum of licensing options that would be applied depending on the category of copyright work. TLF and the museums should also consider whether a ‘Creative Commons +’ licence should be acquired for future projects.

The School sector will continue to have ongoing discussions regarding the management of Intellectual Property and a dialogue between the sectors should be maintained.

Distribution and the online environment ‘Distribution’ implies that digital resources and metadata were funnelled in a one‐way process to the end user. In reality, distribution and use were more complex than this. Teachers were provided with an online platform and a toolset that allowed them to search for, sequence and embed digital resources within an overall learning design that could be customised for their curriculum and their students.

Students were able to interact and collaborate in real time within the activity that the teacher designed; discuss individual or groups of digital resources; and use these as a basis for their own responses. The latter could be uploaded to the collaborative activity and evaluated by the teacher.

The interactive and collaborative features of the distribution component of the model met the requirements of the educational goals for Australian schooling, which contend that:


Schooling should also support the development of skills in areas such as social interaction, cross‐disciplinary thinking and the use of digital media, which are essential in all 21st century occupations.

(MCEETYA 2008B)

Online curriculum content

Within the five weeks allowed for the project, most teachers in the School Trial were able to search for, select and sequence digital resources relevant to their curriculum and local teaching program. Participation in this Trial was a large undertaking for already very busy teachers. They were required to embark on a steep learning curve: learning how to use new software; becoming familiar with digital resources; applying these resources and ICT tools to suit their individual class needs; and meeting significant project administration requirements, including filling out long surveys. Teachers were asked to achieve much within the confines of the Trial; where there was a limited use of digital resources provided and described by the participating museums, this was generally due to the limited time allowed or to limited resources on a particular topic.

Keyword accuracy is dependent on the skill of the writer of the metadata and their knowledge of curriculum areas. This knowledge, and the capacity to use an education thesaurus to assign keywords and metadata about subject and year level, will always be more effectively developed by the sector that wishes to use the resource rather than a writer selected by a museum. This is particularly so in a national project. Ensuring that appropriate keywords and controlled vocabulary terms exist and are correct is important because they are the main means by which users discover the digital resources that suit their needs.

In national projects, there is also an expectation that resources will be relevant to particular jurisdictions. If a Tasmanian or South Australian teacher is designing a collaborative activity about immigration to Australia, then it is appropriate that some digital resources should reflect the experiences of immigration in their jurisdictions.

This has implications for any expansion of the project beyond the Trial. There might be a number of collections to which cultural organisations from around Australia can contribute (eg Australians at war, immigration, Indigenous and non‐Indigenous contact). Priority should also be given to involving national museums with an Australia‐wide collections policy (eg the Australian War Memorial, the National Portrait Gallery).

Learning design

Innovation in learning design is necessarily influenced by factors such as experience in using digital resources for teaching and learning, knowledge of appropriate online pedagogies, and issues relating to the management of students who are learning online.

The ubiquitous use of IWBs in many schools allows teachers to effectively present and discuss one or more digital resources with students. The collaborative elements of the online environment provided within the model also allowed teachers to shape the learning experience through the use of appropriate teaching and learning strategies.

Whether teachers were able to create successful online collaborative learning activities was influenced by their ability to draw on educationally sound pedagogical approaches that would enable students to explore and experiment, think and work creatively, reflect and plan, create new knowledge, communicate and collaborate, and learn through feedback and assessment. Frameworks for teaching in an online world suggest how this can occur and


have been available to teachers for a number of years. However, teachers in the Trial did not always used these frameworks to inform learning design.

The School Trial provided evidence that can be used to support beginning and experienced teachers in the future. The Trial suggests that for a range of reasons, some teachers will require extensive support. The teachers in the Trial who were in this category found it challenging to design tasks that developed skills in areas such as social interaction, cross‐disciplinary thinking and the use of digital media. In such cases, teachers resorted to setting basic question‐and‐answer tasks, models for which can be found in textbooks. As a result, social interaction and cross‐disciplinary thinking among students completing the task were consequently accidental rather than planned for.

On the basis of the evidence of the learning activities developed by this group, there is a need to provide greater guidance and models for developing educationally sound, collaborative online teaching and learning activities. This is a responsible approach, given the number of Australian teachers who are unfamiliar with the designing of such activities.

More experienced teachers in the Trial were able to use a range of teaching and learning strategies that drew upon students’ knowledge and experience and that scaffolded new knowledge through carefully constructed activities. These ranged from a high‐level task created around a single digital resource, to those that used a number of resources to explore concepts and ideas. These teachers are ready to be part of a cross‐jurisdictional, cross‐sectoral online network that allows them to share teaching and learning strategies for encouraging social interaction, cross‐disciplinary thinking and the use of digital media within an online learning environment.

Teachers in the Trial developed a number of collaborative activities that can be published and used as models for other teachers. These activities might also inform teacher professional development on how best to create lessons and sequences of lessons that encourage interaction, collaboration, cross‐disciplinary thinking and the use of digital media.

Online learning experience

The online learning experience of students was dependent on factors such as their previous experience in online learning and the teacher’s capacity to set challenging and authentic learning tasks. Students rightly commented that in some collaborative activities they might just as effectively have been using a textbook and a piece of paper.

One of the consequences of conducting a very short trial with a limited sample of teachers and students was that students did not always have access to rich and stimulating collaborative activities. Collaboration does not mean one size fits all. There were insufficient opportunities devised by teachers for students to learn individually or in groups according to their ability and aptitude. Analysis of student participation and engagement across the collaborative activities showed that catering for different learning styles was conspicuously absent. Active learning that allowed students to put into practice what they had learned in a virtual space was also little catered for.

The needs of different kinds of learners, and different approaches to teaching and learning, should go hand in hand. They need to be more apparent in activities that encourage interaction, collaboration, cross‐disciplinary thinking and the use of digital media.

Despite the tight time frame and the steep learning curve for teachers, the latter did see the potential of this online learning experience for their students. The teachers persisted and learned substantial skills while completing the exercise. Many commented after the Trial that, given another chance, they would do things differently based on their new‐found skills and experience.


It is therefore not surprising that a considerable majority of students endorsed the kind of learning experience provided by the delivery platform and the collaborative activities. This indicates that TLF needs to adapt its delivery platform and support its use through professional development in order to meet the unrecognised demand of students for interaction and collaboration when engaging with curriculum content online.

Evaluation of learning outcomes

A range of tools that would allow for formative and summative assessment were provided to teachers and students within the delivery platform. These were not fully demonstrated within the Preliminary Workshop due to constraints of time. In some instances they were demonstrated to teachers in the field. In other cases, teachers independently discovered and used the feedback tools and the activity log.

While there was not a considerable use of these features, they are a powerful toolset for learning and need to be retained in future versions of the delivery platform. Targeted professional development on their use would also be valuable.

Online learning environment

While the online learning environment created by TLF was not a learning management system, it used certain features of such systems, for example a means of identifying users through the use of nicknames and avatars. It also sought to incorporate a number of elements of Web 2.0 that would promote interaction, collaboration and cross‐disciplinary thinking. These included media sharing, conversational arenas and wikis.

Teachers and, to a greater extent, students generally responded positively to these opportunities. Feedback was sometimes conditional on the extent to which the teacher had supported use of the tools (eg the map and timeline tools) within the activity.

Predictably, teachers and probably students found the chat tool within the virtual workspace to be either liberating or exasperating. While such a tool was highly unusual within a classroom, in a number of instances it was used very effectively to promote and evaluate understanding.

In a number of cases the online learning environment transformed the teacher’s learning design into something that was at times unmanageable. What started out as a screen of resources and instructions ended up being over 20 screens in length once students had uploaded content and made comments.

There will be a wide variation in the readiness for this kind of online learning environment among the Australian educational community. When offering online environments for teachers and students, jurisdictions need to take account of the teacher needs and experience. This can be achieved through a set of scenarios for ascending levels of usage, as shown in Table 22 below.

Table 22: Levels of teacher engagement with the online environment

Scenario Title Activity Comment

Level 1 Basic online lesson plan tools

The teacher searches for, selects, and sequences digital resources, and builds an online lesson plan around these

Caters for inexperienced teachers

Could be used for presentation and discussion

Students could complete tasks collaboratively or individually, and offline


Level 2 Medium‐level online lesson plan tools

As in Level 1 above, but the teacher also has access to templates and a digital online toolset (eg www.exploratree.org.uk)

Caters for teachers with some experience

Templates could include guidance about pedagogy

Collaborative tools would encourage interaction, collaboration and thinking

Level 3 Interactive workspace

As in Level 2 above, but the teacher also has access to avatars, live workspace, timeline, map and uploads

Degree of anonymity for users

Basic elements of the live workspace

Basic toolset

Level 4 Collaborative workspace

As in Level 3 above, but the teacher also has access to wikis, chat and feedback

Advanced wiki and communication options

Enables teacher feedback

These scenarios can be conceptualised as a scale of readiness. They indicate that appropriate versions of the live workspace should be made available to teachers to enable them to gain confidence in the use of the online learning environment and the interactive and collaborative toolsets. This needs to be accompanied by a program of professional development that supports teachers to develop new skills to use these tools most effectively.

Recommendations General

The model used in the project to procure, quality assure and provide access to digital resources for schools was responsive, scalable beyond museums, sustainable and accessible. It produced quality resources that were relevant to the schools sector. The model has the potential to be further developed in 2009 to provide additional quality digital resources for teaching and learning.

Digital resources

The project has demonstrated a model of procurement that has the capacity to deliver cost effective digital resources to the school sector. Phase 1 of the new National Curriculum will develop curriculums for English, History, Mathematics and Science. Phase 2 will be Geography, Language other than English (LOTE) and the Arts. Priority should be given to building collections in these areas in any future phase of development.

Metadata

Cultural organisations should use a common and agreed specification for the metadata they develop to classify and describe their digital objects. In selecting or endorsing a specification, it is the sector’s responsibility to ensure that the metadata developed conforms to the specification to allow for aggregation and sharing of metadata by itself or by other sectors.

The provision of additional metadata fields and data that relate to specifications common to another sector (eg ANZ‐LOM) should be added by the sector following harvesting from museums. It may be an advantage for museums and other institutions to describe specific education focus items with metadata such as ANZ‐LOM to make them more accessible to the school sector.


Statements of significance and educational value

It is appropriate that cultural organisations use a metadata field to include text that defines the significance of a digitised object. These statements will vary because of the nature of the digital object, information that organisations will already have developed and can adapt, and local needs and guidelines. The statements should be associated with the digital object and accessible by an end user as required.

An understanding of educational value will be dependent on the nature of the sector that seeks to use a digital resource. To best meet the needs of the education audience and the National Curriculum, educational value statements should continue to be developed through TLF QA process in partnership with cultural organisations.

Controlled vocabularies

A number of controlled vocabularies are in use within cultural organisations and the education sector. Cultural organisations use a generic thesaurus (eg Library of Congress Subject Headings) but could consider the use of a more specific education controlled thesaurus such as Schools Online Thesaurus (ScOT). Use of these controlled vocabularies to describe digital objects held by cultural organisations is an important tool for facilitating discoverability of these objects for teachers within jurisdictional portals.

Depending on the capability of organisations, cultural organisations could take responsibility for contributing the ScOT vocabulary to their own records. The thesaurus software has been enhanced to make this process easier and is available to cultural organisations. Due to the level of expertise required to apply appropriate terms to these records, ScOT terms should continue to be checked (and added if necessary) as part of TLF QA process.

Intellectual property and licensing

The museum sector should adopt an open and consistent licensing scheme that supports sustainable provision of digital content for educational purposes. Any licence system should take account of statutory licence provision to minimise ongoing payments to collection agencies for the use of digital resources for educational purposes. Currently Creative Commons is being investigated for its suitability.

There may be different views about intellectual property within cultural organisations and the sectors that seek to use or license their digital resources. In the case of the schools sector that wants to promote responsible copyright behaviour there is a requirement to license digital objects and metadata that meet the requirements of teaching and learning. It is the responsibility of the cultural sector to develop intellectual property guidelines and processes that outline its requirements as content providers.

Further discussion and negotiation about intellectual property is clearly required between the school sector and cultural sector.

Access and engagement

TLF developed an online learning environment for the trial in which teachers could develop collaborative online activities for students. Within these activities students could collaborate and interact while accessing and creating new meanings around the digital resources supplied by cultural organisations.

The School Trial validated the main features of the collaborative online environment. Jurisdictions are encouraged to promote online environments that enable customisation by teachers to meet teaching and learning needs, and to support student collaboration.

Access to digital resources on cultural organisations’ web servers

The model used in the project required teachers and students to view the resource on the web server of the cultural organisation.


Cultural organisations need to acknowledge the importance of ensuring that the item is available in an ongoing manner and that the appropriate text and copyright statements are maintained.

Professional learning and guidelines

Teachers need support when developing collaborative learning activities that use educationally relevant planning models and frameworks and teaching and learning strategies. Successful models of learning developed during the School Trial should be promoted as exemplars. Further exemplars are promoted that reflect particular learning theories that were not represented in the teacher created collaborative activities should be developed.

Consideration should be given to the development and distribution of online advice for teachers about how to develop educationally sound learning activities within collaborative online learning environments.

Customisation of the online learning environment

Online learning environments need to take account of the differing capabilities of teachers. Consideration should be given to enabling teachers to scaffold their experience and to customise the online learning environment to suit their readiness for working in online learning environments. These needs should encompass instructional and collaborative learning.

To support this clear advice needs to be provided to teachers about the teaching and learning strategies supported by the tools offered in a customised online learning environment.

Additional tools to facilitate interactive and collaborative learning

While the online environment developed for the project incorporated a number of Web 2.0 tools, consideration should be given to providing tools that can be accessed by teachers and allow students to map ideas, solve problems, explore and analyse ideas and investigate differing perspectives. An example of such a toolset is provided by Futurelab UK on the exploratree website.

Formative and summative assessment

The online environment developed for the School Trial incorporated a number of tools that could be used to observe student interactions and collaboration as well as to provide feedback to individuals and groups. These tools are an indispensable component of the online learning environment.

The limited use of the tools within the Trial indicates that teachers need guidance in using them effectively to improve student learning. Consideration might also be given to developing exemplars that illustrate how the tools can be used to support and assess learning.


Appendix 1 Case studies The School Trial within the Museum & Education Digital Content Exchange (M&EDCE) ultimately included 13 schools selected from New South Wales, South Australia, Tasmania and Victoria. Table 23 shows the number of school types drawn from each state.

Table 23: Number of participating schools by y school type and by state

Primary (Government)

Primary (Catholic) Secondary (Government)

New South Wales 2

South Australia 1 1 1

Tasmania 1 2

Victoria 4 1

TOTAL 6 3 4

Within the Trial schools, classes selected for active participation varied according to the teaching program of the participating teacher. In one case, a participating teacher in a state online learning network developed collaborative activities for distance‐education students drawn from junior secondary and middle secondary levels.

Table 24: Summary of school case studies

School Research focus

School A A Year 5 and 6 class engaged in a single collaborative activity about ‘Land and identity’. Of the nine digital resources selected, six were drawn from the National Museum of Australia’s collection of digitised Papunya paintings.

School B A Grade 6 class of boys engaged with a single collaborative activity about ‘Gender stereotypes in the media’. The teachers selected one digital resource from the wider TLF collection and supplemented this with other school‐sourced cartoons about gender issues.

School C Three classes from years 3 to 6 engaged with a single collaborative activity, ‘How to have fun!’, which focused on games and toys. The activity used eight digital resources, five of which were provided and described by participating museums. The learning design for this activity is included as Model 1 in Appendix 2.1.

School D Following an activity providing an ‘Introduction to Scootle Sandbox’, students in a Year 9 History class undertook ‘Gold Rush document analysis’. The collaborative activity included seven digital resources, one of which was provided and described by a participating museum.

School E A Year 5 and 6 composite class followed their work on The Silver Sword with a collaborative activity called ‘Family matters: the strength of belonging’. The activity explored issues such as immigration and refugees. Five of the six digital resources included were provided and described by participating museums.

School F Four students were selected from junior secondary classes to participate in the Trial. The teacher designed a collaborative activity about ‘Wart correspondence’ that included four digitised letters and diaries selected and described by Museum Victoria.

School G Six students from Year 5 and six students from Year 6 were selected to undertake two activities: an introduction to Scootle Sandbox and one of two activities about the Gold Rush. Of the 13 digital resources selected, three were chosen from the pool selected and described by participating museums.

School H A class of Grade 6 students was selected to participate in a collaborative activity about ‘The history of toys’. Ten digital resources, nine of which were provided and described by the museums, were included in the activity.


School I Students from Year 9 participated in a collaborative activity about ‘Australian identity’. Seven digital resources, all provided and described by participating museums, were included in the activity.

School J A Year 6 class was selected to undertake six separate collaborative activities that focused on different aspects of the Australian gold rushes. These included gold, the Chinese on the goldfields, and Ned Kelly as an iconic Australian. Six digital resources were used, four of which were selected from the resources provided and described by participating museums.

School K A Year 6 class was selected to engage with a single collaborative activity – ‘Development of communication’ in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Of the eight digital resources selected by the teacher, only two were selected from the resources provided and described by the participating museums.

School L Year 5 and 6 students engaged in a single collaborative activity – ‘Who do they think we are?’ while exploring Australian identity. The activity included 13 digital resources selected by the teacher, of which five were selected from the resources provided and described by participating museums. The learning design for this activity is included as Model 2 in Appendix 2.2.

School M A group of students from years 6 to 10 were drawn from a number of schools, with the teacher connecting remotely through a distance‐learning approach. The teacher developed three collaborative activities using digitised Indigenous artworks from the National Museum of Australia. Students responded to one of these and subsequently created visual and written stories. Of the six digital resources selected, five were selected from the resources provided and described by participating museums. The learning design for this activity is included as Model 3 in Appendix 2.3.


School A School A is a Category 6 government coeducational primary school in South Australia. The school has 101–200 students enrolled. Of the participating students, between one and ten per cent o were Indigenous. A larger proportion of students in the class (11–20 per cent) had language‐other‐than‐English or lower socioeconomic backgrounds.

Approximately 50 per cent of teachers at School A are familiar with and use TLF content (learning objects, digital curriculum resources). The teacher participating in the Trial has sometimes accessed and used TLF content. The school planned to draw individual students and groups from the teacher’s Year 5 and 6 class, using between one and five computers in a computer laboratory.

The curriculum context the teacher selected for the Trial was the strand ‘Place, space and environment’ within the Society and Environment learning area. Within this strand, the following learning outcomes were selected to underpin the collaborative activity: ‘Interprets and represents data about natural and built environments, resources, systems, and interactions, both global and local, using maps, images and texts’; and ‘Identifies factors affecting an environmental issue, and reports on ways to act for sustainable futures’.

The teacher believed that the Trial would expose students to diverse museum artefacts, in particular Indigenous artefacts, as well as some familiar twentieth century artefacts such as a banknote, flight black box, and artworks from the Mambo studio. Students were required to explore these artefacts, develop mapping skills, become aware of a range of cultural backgrounds, and develop their own stories.

The teacher constructed a single collaborative activity using nine digital resources. Six of these digital resources were selected from the National Museum of Australia’s digitised collection of Indigenous artworks. Within the activity the teacher did not refer to the curator‐supplied descriptions or educational value statements. The background information and the language in these items were considered to be relevant to teachers but only sometimes relevant to students. In responding to the Teacher Post‐Trial Survey the teacher made no reference to whether the title, description and educational value statements were useable in an education context, that is, helpful in selecting content or in conducting a lesson.

Table 25: Land and identity

Learning area Society and Environment

Theme Australian identity, characteristics and symbols

Collaborative activity Land and identity


R10006

R10005

R9989

R9936

R9948

R10019

R5581

R4765

R4423

‘Dreaming of Matjadi’ (Matjatji) by David Corby Tjapaltjarri, 1975

‘Dreaming at Kamparrarrpa’ (Kampurarrpa) by Turkey Tolson Tjupurrula, 1976

‘Making spears’ by Long Jack Phillipus Tjakamarra, 1975

‘Dreaming story at Warlugalong’ (Warlukurlangu) by Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, 1976

‘Flying dingoes’ by Mick Namararri Tjapltjarri, 1974

‘Wilkinkarra Men’s Camp’ by Long Jack Phillipus Tjakamarra

Polymer banknote, 1988

Poster for Mambo

Black box flight recorder, c1961


The learning design the teacher created for the students included a range of questions and tasks about a single digital resource or a group of resources. Students were initially asked to comment about maps of the Adelaide Hills and the area in which the school was located. The task then included instructions to view two Papunya paintings and to use Scootle Chat to comment on and discuss how the artists represented the land and ideas.

Further tasks included making comments about these and subsequent artworks. Students were encouraged to use interactive Google Maps software to view landscapes and compare them with the representation of landscapes in the paintings. When students progressed to the 3 twentieth‐century non‐Indigenous resources, they were encouraged to add comments and write a monologue.

Each of the students actively participated in the collaborative activity. The teacher judged that students had achieved the intended learning outcomes at a high level. In summing up the online learning experience in the Teacher Post‐Trial Survey, the teacher commented: ‘The novelty of chat (both for the learning task itself and the interactive nature of the project); the online resources; a learning task with a variety of entry points; and the ability to see how others were thinking and responding to their learning was highly significant and maintained student interest and thinking throughout. The ability and interests of students to enter a safe learning environment outside of school hours was also a highly engaging element of the collaborative learning experience’.

Issues relating to bandwidth compromised the experience of the teacher and the group of students at School A. Bandwidth was affected when more than a few students at one time engaged with the remote servers on which the online environment was housed. The teacher strongly agreed, however, that the online learning environment was engaging and effective, facilitated collaboration, stimulated learning and helped to achieve learning outcomes.

The online interface (ie Scootle Sandbox) was considered to be less effective or easy to use. In judging the success of specific tools within Scootle Sandbox, the teacher endorsed the use of the activity log for assessment. The teacher also agreed that the map, chat, feedback components and the overall interactivity of the live workspace were very effective. The timeline tool, and in particular the advanced search, were judged to be less effective.

The teacher followed up the collaborative activity by inviting an Indigenous Elder to speak to the class and tell them a story. The teacher commented: ‘[when I was] watching the kids intently listening, concentrating, doodling and making notes [I] felt the whole exercise [was] worthwhile. The collaborative activity had primed the kids to be receptive and engaged – listening and able to join together in the discussion of symbols and metaphor’.


School B School B is a government coeducational primary school in Melbourne. The school has 350–410 students enrolled. It includes specific classes for boys due to gender imbalances in enrolment. No students in the group selected for the Trial had a language‐other‐than‐English, Indigenous or low socioeconomic background.

Most teachers and students at the school have had some experience using a range of online resources produced by TLF. Two teachers from the school participated in the Trial, supporting each other and a single class of boys at Year 6 level. The teachers had some prior experience in using digital resources in teaching.

The teachers in the Trial devised a single collaborative activity that could cover elements of three domains of the Victorian Essential Learning Standards (VELS): the Arts, English and ICT. The elements of the domains for Level 4 that were selected included ‘Interpretations of and responses to a wide range of print and multimodal texts’; ‘Understanding and discussion of the textual features of different texts; for example, sequence of ideas in persuasive texts’; ‘Analysis and discussion of a range of perspectives presented in different texts on the same topic’; ‘Use of a variety of comprehension strategies; for example, reviewing, summarising, asking questions or predicting’; and identification of the ways in which texts present a range of values and attitudes.

Content selection proved to be a challenge for the teachers once they had selected their topic. While there may have been museum content about gender stereotyping in the media, some of it was probably age‐inappropriate. The teachers believed that while the content descriptions and educational value statements were easy for them to understand, they were more challenging for the students. The teachers felt they needed to explain and discuss the educational value statements in particular.

The title selected for the collaborative activity was ‘Gender stereotypes in the media’. The teachers used a museum‐selected and described cartoon to introduce the activity. The teachers also decided that they would independently source another cartoon and upload it to the live workspace.

Table 26: Gender stereotypes in the media

Learning area The Arts; English; Information and Communication Technology

Theme Gender

Collaborative activity Gender stereotypes in the media

TLF‐ID Digital curriculum resources

R9983 ‘Dr Jekyll and Mrs Hyde’ by Judy Horacek, 1991

Father and his newborn son

The teachers set a number of goals for students. These included learning to navigate effectively through the online environment; communicating with group members using Scootle Chat; engaging in higher‐level thinking activities; and collaborating and integrating others’ opinions into their own thinking. An IWB was used to introduce the online interface and to provide a context for the activity. The IWB was also used when it became clear that students needed additional help in deconstructing a particular resource. At the end of the collaborative activity students used the IWB to present the cartoons they had developed and uploaded.


The students completed the activity in a computer laboratory with networked desktop computers. There was one student per computer. The teachers posed a number of questions and set a specific task. The questions required the students to interpret, and in some instances creatively add to, the museum‐sourced resource and the file. The questions produced a range of open‐ended responses. Each student was required to complete his own cartoon with a ‘message’ about gender stereotyping.

The teachers recognised that this Year 6 class of boys were highly literate in the online environment: ‘Not only were they able to navigate and use the environment effectively, [but] because it was online, it was highly engaging to this particular class’. The feedback tools and activity logs were considered to be effective in that teachers could provide instant feedback to guide student thinking. The activity log was used to see who was updating their work, how many times and when. The option to give group and individual feedback was also seen to be useful. While Scootle Chat could be used to provide immediate feedback it was seen to be less useful than the other tools. A number of other tools were also used, and one teacher commented: ‘We found the timeline and map to be too much of a “trial and error” method of searching whereas the more traditional search options (basic and advanced) yielded better results’.

The teachers see great potential for the use of digital curriculum resources in collaborative activities for homework tasks, group projects and research tasks. In assessing their students’ engagement with the collaborative activity, they said: ‘We feel that the students loved using ICT to complete the tasks. With this particular group of children they are always looking for new and exciting ICT developments. This experience was definitely one of these. We thought that displaying the students’ comments added to the experience as they could read others’ opinions and then further articulate their own. This would not have been possible if they had … written their thoughts into their writing books’.


School C School C is a government coeducational primary school in Victoria. The school has 501–700 students enrolled. Within the classes selected by the school to participate in the Trial, there were no students with an Indigenous background. Fewer than ten per cent of students had a language‐other‐than‐English or low socioeconomic background.

It is estimated that about 50 per cent of teachers at the school are familiar with and use TLF content. Some of the teachers in the Trial were familiar with TLF content, and used an IWB to model the desired learning before students engaged with the content.

Three classes, of which at least two were composite groups, participated in the Trial. The composite classes were a Year 3 and 4 class and a Year 5 and 6 class. Five students from each of the three classes were chosen to participate in a single collaborative activity.

This collaborative activity used the one set of digital curriculum resources to meet aspects of different curriculum levels within VELS. The class at the middle primary level focused on learning outcomes and standards within the Humanities curriculum at Level 3. This group aimed to build humanities skills in ‘[using] a range of historical evidence, including pictures, to retell events and describe historical characters. They develop timelines to show events in sequence’. English at Level 3 was also nominated as a curriculum focus but the teachers did not define a specific standard.

Ultimately the teachers participating in the Trial were able to find resources relevant to their curriculum from within the pool of museum‐provided and described content. They originally tried to find content to support the Health curriculum, then moved on to find content about flying doctors, but the limited range of museum content provided in the Trial could not meet their needs. Ultimately they were able to select content about play and games that could be linked to their curriculum.

The teachers judged the descriptions and educational value statements provided by the museums to be mostly relevant to teachers, useable in an educational context, helpful in selecting content, and accurate. They deemed them to be less suitable for primary students and rarely useable in conducting a lesson. They considered the Powerhouse Museum descriptions and educational value statements to be particularly technical in nature.

The interactive learning activity the teachers developed was entitled ‘How to have fun!’ To introduce the activity, teachers used a movie clip that was a general TLF digital curriculum resource rather than a museum‐provided resource. Other content, mostly derived from the pool of museum‐selected and described resources, was used to represent the development of children’s games and toys over a period of more than 70 years.

Table 27: How to have fun!

Learning area Level 3 Humanities; English

Theme Games and toys

Collaborative activity How to have fun!


R2489

R5235

M000263

M000265

M000285

Boys playing marbles at school in 1925

‘Teaching children to play’, 1943 – asset 2

Shirley Temple doll, 1935–36

Allen’s motorcycling collector cards, 1927–30

JNF Mercedes‐Benz toy car, 1951–62


R6376

M000403

M000398

Knucklebones, collected 1954–55

Spiritblade inline skates by Rollerblade, 1995

Skateboard, 1997

Having selected and sequenced the eight digital resources, the teachers set the three groups 4 tasks. These began with basic comprehension and synthesis. Students were required to identify similarities and differences and to create a basic timeline.

Tasks could be completed online (eg responses to questions) or offline (eg the timeline). The teacher of the Year 3 and 4 group was surprised at the speed with which students moved through the activity.

The learning design of the collaborative activity did not specifically refer to the use by students of the Scootle Sandbox interactive workspace toolset. The students used the chat tool and the comments tools within the learning pathway for a range of purposes. Some of these were on task. As a consequence of students inserting numerous comments into the collaborative activity it became exceedingly long, so the tasks set by the teacher were frequently lost. Interestingly, within the completed collaborative activity, students made no distinctions based on each other’s ages or class levels. The teachers also noted that their original expectation that the students would develop skills in note taking and exploring the perceptions of others was rarely met.

As the teachers were usually supervising other students in the class, their capacity to use the online environment provided by Scootle Sandbox and to supervise students engaging with it was necessarily restricted. The teacher who rated elements of the interface (eg Scootle Chat, Timeline or Map) as not very effective might have given a different rating if they had engaged with the students in real time or had built activities relating to these elements into the tasks.

Teachers and students at the school differed in their responses to the learning experience offered by Scootle Sandbox. Students generally gave a high rating to Scootle Chat and actively used some of the tools (eg the zoom tool) to explore particular resources. The teachers, relying on an evaluation of the students’ interaction as represented in a completed collaborative activity, were disappointed that student learning and engagement seemed to be sometimes overwhelmed by social interaction.


School D School D is a coeducational government secondary school in Melbourne. The school has an enrolment of more than 1,000 students.

The use of TLF content is uncommon in the school. While some teachers do access and use these resources in class, the two teachers who participated in the Trial had rarely used them.

The class of one of these teachers, a single Year 9 History class, was selected by the school to participate. The two teachers prepared, delivered and evaluated the collaborative activity within a classroom that had been converted into a computer laboratory.

While there were no students of Indigenous descent in the class, between one and ten per cent of students had language backgrounds other than English. Some of the students in the group were international students who needed to translate the description and educational value statements into their first language using translation software in order to understand meanings and context. Within the class, 11–20 per cent of students were estimated to have low socioeconomic backgrounds.

The choice of topic for the Trial – ‘Gold Rush document analysis’ – supported the curriculum focus and standards in the VELS domain of Humanities – History at Level 6 (ie years 9–10). Two aspects of the curriculum were specified as standards for the students to meet: ‘To build upon the students’ ability to analyse historical images (eg placing evidence in a broader context, detecting bias etc)’, and ‘Building the students’ capacity to interact using ICT’.

At the Preliminary Workshop, the teachers selected a number of digital resources and created a sample collaborative activity. This activity was subsequently ‘lost’ within the system, requiring the teachers to rediscover appropriate digital resources and to construct a new activity. Like other teachers who searched for Gold Rush resources at primary and secondary levels, the teachers initially found numerous resources that could be used for their activity. In the rediscovery phase, however, the teachers felt they were unable to find or select sufficient comparable resources to support the activity.

In evaluating the usefulness of the museum content the teachers believed that it was comparable with other TLF content with which they were familiar. They judged the titles, descriptions and educational value statements developed by museums to be easily viewed, relevant to teachers, helpful in selecting content, and mostly accurate. They believed that this content was only sometimes useful for students within an educational context or helpful to teachers in conducting a lesson.

The teachers developed two collaborative activities. The first activity was an introduction to Scootle Sandbox and the second was on the Gold Rush. Both activities were designed to support content and skills developed in previous lessons. It should be noted that teachers selected only one piece of museum‐provided and described content (from the National Museum of Australia); this was used in the introductory activity.

Table 28: Gold Rush document analysis

Learning area Humanities – History

Theme The Gold Rush

Collaborative activity Introduction to Scootle Sandbox; Gold Rush document analysis


R6364 Eight‐hour day celebration banner, 1914


M000193

R3034

Breastplate belonging to ‘Timothy, Chief of Merricumbene’, 1840

Australian gold diggings, c1855

R4953

R3179

R3386

R4844

‘Gold buyer, the market price discussed, Eagle Hawk’, 1852

‘Cradling, Forrest Creek’, 1853

‘The claim disputed’, c1852

Chinese quarter on the Ballarat gold fields, 1868

The teachers first taught the students how historians interpret and analyse visual evidence. The students then began to analyse visual evidence in the collaborative activities. The two activities presented a selection of digital resources and asked students specific questions about each one. Typically, questions relating to the resources asked students to remember aspects of a resource (eg What is ...? Why was …? Who was …?) and to identify aspects they thought were historically inaccurate. Students either brought prior knowledge of the period to such questions or were prompted to compare their own ideas with specific pages within their textbooks.

During the second lesson on the collaborative activities, most students had not progressed beyond the questions included in the introductory activity. This may have been because the teachers had less control of the learning experience than they were accustomed to having in a conventional classroom, or because they were unaccustomed to working with digital resources.

Following the conclusion of the activities, the teachers judged that most students had been engaged with and enjoyed them, although some ESL students had problems comprehending the materials. Apart from these exceptions, the teachers believed most students had actively participated in the activities and achieved the expected learning outcomes. In retrospect, the teachers felt that their collaborative activities ‘could have been more challenging’ for students, and that the activities were not sufficiently ‘expansive’.

In summing up students’ engagement with the online environment, the teachers were generally positive about the students’ response. They strongly agreed that the environment was engaging and easy for students to use. The environment was deemed to be stimulating for students and useful in assisting them to achieve learning outcomes. Teachers were less convinced that the environment actually facilitated collaboration as effectively as they could achieve in a conventional classroom. The interactive and collaborative functions and features of the Scootle Sandbox workspace were rated as satisfactory to very effective. Of these features and functions, the timeline, map and chat tools were deemed to be the most successful.

In summing up their own and their students’ engagement with the digital curriculum resources, the two teachers endorsed the need for all teachers to embrace this type of technology, as students actively engage with technology daily. They suggested that an option for future development would be for students to design their own inquiry using Scootle Sandbox and the museum‐provided and described digital curriculum resources.


School E School E is a government coeducational primary school in Tasmania. The school has 101–200 students enrolled. No students in the class selected to participate in the Trial had language‐other‐than‐English or Indigenous backgrounds. A small number of students had low socioeconomic backgrounds.

Nearly all teachers at School E are familiar with TLF content (ie learning objects). The teacher participating in the Trial had some prior experience using TLF content, particularly since the school introduced IWBs into classrooms.

A Year 5 and 6 composite class was selected to participate in the Trial. It was intended that students in the class would engage with the collaborative activity in pairs within the school’s computer laboratory.

The collaborative activity, ‘Family matters: the strength of belonging’, aimed to explore complex issues such as migration and refugees. The activity was designed to connect to the Tasmanian Society and History K‐10 syllabus and support materials. In designing the activity, the teacher believed that specific performance criteria, stage outcomes and sample learning opportunities within the English‐literacy, Health and Wellbeing syllabuses, as well as the ICT Framework, might also be addressed. Specific aspects of these syllabuses that the activity would cover included ‘the role of organisations and governments in responding to natural disasters’; ‘the role of democratic processes in addressing environmental issues’; ‘the benefits of belonging to family and community groups’; and ‘how active citizenship can affect the future’.

The collaborative activity was also designed to support previous class work on Ian Serraillier’s novel The Silver Sword.

The teacher was easily able to find appropriate resources for the collaborative activity within the pool of museum resources selected for the Trial.

Every digital resource in the activity was drawn from the pool of resources supplied and described by Museum Victoria and the National Museum of Australia. In addition to the digital resources selected, the collaborative activity asked questions about The Silver Sword and set tasks requiring research on the World Wide Web.

Table 29: Family matters: the strength of belonging

Learning area Society and History; English‐literacy; Health and Wellbeing; ICT Framework

Theme Active citizenship

Collaborative activity Family matters: the strength of belonging


M000156

M000879

M000877

M000883

M000873

R10227

Hungarian national dress, 1974

Digital photograph – Mother, Father and Baby, Midway Migrant Hostel, Maribyrnong, 1974

Digital photograph – Two Boys in Front of Nissan Hut, Nunawading Migrant Hostel, 1958‐1959

Digital Photograph – Man, Woman and Two Girls, Backyard, Ukrainian Christmas Day, Newport, circa 1957

Digital Photograph – View of the White Star Liner MV ‘Georgic’ and Passengers, Station Pier, Port Melbourne, 1949

‘UnAustralia’ cartoon by Fiona Katsauskas, 2001


The collaborative activity began with tasks that introduced the resources and the planned activities. These tasks scaffolded learning by building on the students’ previous knowledge and experience. The teacher used the comments field and the question field (sometimes interchangeably) to set analytical, research, imaginative and creative questions and tasks that required students to work individually and in groups.

Even before the students began engaging with the activity, it demonstrated the limits of the live workspace in terms of readability. When students interacted within the workspace, a long and sometimes wordy activity became extremely long, sometimes requiring students to scroll through many screens in order to find an instruction or read the teacher’s or each other’s comments. The teacher noted that ‘maybe I have made the activity too involved, but still the students gave amazing responses …’. During the sessions, students engaged with the activity in pairs, each taking turns to input information. The teacher believed that this encouraged collaboration and synthesis. In reflecting on the learning outcomes of the activity the teacher felt that: ‘This learning will be ongoing but we have certainly made an excellent start to understanding the value of belonging to groups and the benefits that are derived from diversity in communities’.

Both before and during the activity, the teacher used an IWB to provide instructions. These instructions consciously engaged students with some elements of the Scootle Sandbox online environment (eg ‘Go to the View content section …’). Within the Scootle Sandbox interactive workspace the teacher found the basic search facility, timeline and map to be effective tools. They were less convinced of the value of the advanced search, and the chat and feedback tools.

The major issues that arose within the group involved the capacity of Scootle Sandbox to accept various file formats. Students had completed work using software such as Movie Maker and Game Maker but were not always able to upload these files. It was clear that teachers and students needed clearer guidelines about Scootle‐compatible file formats.

In the Teacher Post‐Trial Survey, the teacher noted that the students found the learning experience engaging: ‘The students loved being online … and it was a terrific exercise in observing how they were able to self‐manage their time. Students were always keen to get online. Whenever they had spare time they would ask if they could get on to Scootle [Sandbox]’. According to the teacher, students made comments such as ‘This is fun’, ‘I like working this way’, ‘I didn’t realise the things I can get from museum websites’ and ‘Can we keep working this way?’

The teacher was able to sum up both positive and negative aspects of the collaborative activity within the online learning environment. They identified the following weakness: ‘This definitely supports the way kids think they learn best, but I believe that students are very reactive in this learning environment without that encouragement to think more deeply. I’m concerned that too much of the online format could close down the diversity of thinking and talking that we need to help us understand different points of view. It’s difficult to get across meaning with just words and pictures’.

The teacher made the following positive comments: ‘This has been a terrific introduction for my students. They have shown willingness, and an ability to work in this way, but I need now to refine the ways we all work on this type of activity. I can see that I could construct different learning paths in different curriculum areas and for different levels of learning and understanding that students could work on [with] their individual level of ability. There is so much scope that I can see, I just need to think more about the process we have all been through and how I would maximise the learning we have had as a result and transfer that into new ways of working’.


School F School F is a government coeducational secondary school in rural Tasmania. Between 301 and 400 students are enrolled in the school. Most classes have access to the internet on a daily basis, depending on the students’ age and the type of subject they are studying. Older students have greater access to computers in computer laboratories and classrooms, and through the use of laptops.

The two teachers who participated in the Student Trial noted that teachers at the school rarely use TLF content. Before the beginning of the Trial these two teachers had had little experience in accessing and using TLF content.

The teachers selected four students from classes at the lower secondary level to participate in the Trial. The students accessed the collaborative activity from the school’s library.

The teachers used the syllabuses of Society and History, and English‐literacy as a context for the collaborative activity they developed, which was based on the study of wartime correspondence. Within Society and History, the focus was ‘Historical inquiry: Undertake historical inquiries in relation to war’. In English the aim was to ‘Acquire, critically examine and communicate information’. The literacy goals were ‘Read, view and interpret texts’ and ‘Construct written electronic texts for an audience’.

The content selected by the teachers was rated as easily viewed, relevant to teachers and students, useable in an educational context and helpful in conducting a lesson. While the teachers did not explicitly instruct students to engage with the descriptions or educational value statements, the students clearly read and understood these. Comments included: ‘This is kind of hard but it’s pretty cool how the people doing the restoration found the letter under the floor boards’ and ‘It was probably written around 1941–42 according to the letter because they found heaps of letters that were written around that time too’.

The digital resources the teachers selected were two letters and two diaries written during the First and Second World Wars. All the resources came from the pool of content selected and described by Museum Victoria. Whereas many teachers in the Trial selected resources that were photographs of objects or paintings, the two teachers at School F selected text‐based resources. Students from School F found it much easier to provide responses to these compared with students responding to visually based resources. This is undoubtedly due to the frequency with which students engage with written texts. This experience indicates that it would be worthwhile for the museums to provide more text‐based historical resources.

Table 30: War correspondence activities

Learning area Society and History; English‐literacy

Theme Communication during wartime in Australia

Collaborative activity War correspondence activities


M000476

M000479

M000743

M000742

Letter – Mick, Alice, Jim and Auntie Lil to Aircraftman Royce Phillips, Personal, 1941–42

Letter – Private Albert Edward Kemp to Ethel Kemp, 1917

Diary – World War I, Corporal S W Siddeley, 4 Apr 1915 – 11 May 1915

Diary – World War I, Corporal S W Siddeley, 27 Aug 1915 – 23 Sept 1915

The teachers developed the initial learning design of the collaborative activity between 13 and 15 March. They gave very clear instructions to students, such as ‘Examine and read this letter and then add your thoughts using the “Add comments” tool’, ‘Your task is to construct


a reply to this letter. Things that you will need to consider are: Who will be replying, what language they would use, what topics were raised, and how would she be feeling?’ and ‘Compare the two diaries. How are they the same or different? Why do you think these people kept a diary? Choose one of the entries and write what you think the next entry may contain’. This pedagogical approach encouraged a range of thinking skills: remembering what was written, understanding purpose and genre, applying what is viewed to new situations, and analysing texts in order to create new content.

Each of the students was able to provide quite credible responses to the systematic and yet challenging questions. The teachers believed that the students ‘were enthusiastic about being part of a different learning experience from what they are used to. They worked well as a collaborative group, discussing all tasks and articulating their understanding. They asked questions of each [other] throughout the discussions’. The teachers agreed that the four students were engaged with the task and maintained this engagement rather than being distracted by the tools.

The teachers also agreed that the online learning environment (ie Scootle Sandbox) was engaging and effective, facilitated collaboration, stimulated learning and helped students to achieve learning outcomes. They were less certain that the interface was easy to use. In evaluating the tools provided in Scootle Sandbox, the teachers judged that Scootle Chat and the live workspace were very effective. They also agreed that the basic search, advanced search and feedback facility were also effective. The timeline and the map were judged to be least useful, although these could be made more useful by the museums using tags. In summing up whether this online format supports the different ways that students learn, the teachers argued that: ‘It is a very visual and kinaesthetic way of learning and understanding. Its interactive nature allows for the students’ individual learning styles’.

The teachers identified some of the pedagogies and associated learning tasks suitable for future activities in this online environment: ‘As we only did this task with four students, we can see the value of creating whole class lessons that would facilitate more in‐depth discussions and a larger range of thoughts and ideas from a wider group of students. Also with a larger group there would be wider opportunity for more cooperative learning to occur’.


School G School G is a coeducational government primary school in Melbourne. The school has an enrolment of 501–700 students. The group of students selected by the school to participate in the Trial did not include students with an Indigenous background. Fewer than ten per cent of students in the group had language‐other‐than‐English or low socioeconomic backgrounds.

About half of the classes in the school use TLF content, and the two teachers in the Trial had some prior experience in its use. For the Trial, a composite class was formed comprising six students from Year 5 and six students from Year 6, led by the two class teachers. A substitute teacher taught the remaining students. Teaching and learning activities occurred in a library annexe using a bank of desktop computers.

The choice of topic for the Trial – ‘Gold in Australia’– arose from the school’s teaching program and from VELS. The topic was linked to standards in the domains of English, Humanities (History, Geography), Information and Communications Technology, and Personal Learning. The teachers defined students’ learning aims for the activity as: furthering understanding of the Gold Rush and its importance to Australia’s history; to be able to interact with each other digitally; to be able to develop and reorganise the collaborative activity to suit their needs; to gain an understanding of the resources they were able to access; and to gain an understanding that this was an effective way to access museums’ resources without physically going to a museum.

The teachers initially found it difficult to locate suitable resources within the pool of museum‐selected and described resources. Perhaps teachers had expected that the Trial would provide richer or more dynamic resources, as they noted that most of the resources available were ‘photographic images’. However, the teachers noted the advantages of using browse and search features that categorised resources explicitly. The museum content was deemed to be well described and useful for planning, although the teachers noted that the language of the descriptions and the educational value statements was too technical for primary school students.

The teachers created three collaborative activities within the Trial. One activity was adapted from a provided model and used to introduce issues relating to the learning experience and the online environment. Two further activities were developed – Gold 1 and Gold 2 – that fitted into the school program, which had already included visits to Sovereign Hill. Other supporting tasks included reading, writing, research, and performance relating to the topic. Half the group completed Gold 1 while the other half completed Gold 2. The two activities varied somewhat in the resources used and the tasks set. The resources chosen included three museum‐provided and described digital resources, all from Powerhouse Museum.

Table 31: [Toys], Gold 1 and Gold 2

Learning area English; Humanities – History; Humanities – Geography; Information and Communications Technology

Theme The Gold Rush

Collaborative activities [Toys]; Gold 1; Gold 2


R4177

R4408

R4176

Gold scales, c1890

Gold diggings board game, c1855

Gold‐washing cradle, c1850


M000208

R6367

L680

M000223

M000217

R4953

R9166


Bunyip gold nugget, 1972

Gold rush: level 2


‘Gold fields of Australia’ board game, 1853–56

‘Gold buyer, the market price discussed, Eagle Hawk’, 1852

Peach’s Gold – Eureka, 1983: ‘Victoria the golden’

The students engaged with the collaborative activities on desktop computers in a classroom. Each activity used a number of digital curriculum resources, although not all resources included associated activities, questions or tasks. Instructions to students either focused on the live workspace (eg ‘Drag and drop content blocks in order to reorder the activity’; ‘Answer the question adding a comment using Scootle Chat’) or required analysis of and collaborative learning about particular resources. The latter required students to imaginatively empathise with gold miners; weigh pros and cons; develop hypotheses; compare the past with what is known today; and search for and upload additional resources.

All students were able to complete the tasks set in the collaborative activities. Time‐on‐task was enhanced by the students having experience the online environment during the introductory activity. Many students exceeded the teachers’ expectations by exploring personal feelings about the content. The teachers perceived that students ‘were excited to participate and were highly motivated, even when there were glitches in the system’. Teachers used a number of assessment techniques to evaluate individual and group participation and achievement. The teachers thought that while individual achievement could be monitored, the group assessment and particularly the activity log were less useful.

The teacher used an IWB to demonstrate the functionality of the Scootle Sandbox interactive workspace and to introduce the collaborative activities. When the students engaged individually on their own computers they found the interface easy to use and intuitive. They typically responded to Scootle Chat enthusiastically and were tempted to use it for social interaction rather than for learning. The use of chat improved during the activities, and the teachers used it to provide advice and feedback to students.

Students’ use of the tools within the interface varied depending on teacher instructions and the capacities of the tools. The advanced search, timeline and map tools were least useful for this school; however, the basic search and the chat, feedback and collaborative learning tools were all assessed as effective or very effective. Teachers and students particularly valued the ‘zoom’ feature in some of the museum resources.

The overall experience for students was regarded as being highly successful. The learning activities enabled students to tap into their computer skills and interests. Students were judged to be highly motivated, engaging in discussion about the resources and using language online in ways that were appropriate for the tool or resource.


School H School H is a coeducational government primary school in Melbourne. It has 301–400 students enrolled. Within the group selected by the school to participate in the Trial, there were no Indigenous students. Students with language backgrounds other than English or with low socioeconomic backgrounds constituted between one and ten per cent of the group.

Interactive IWBs are located in every classroom, with all classrooms having a 1:3 computer‐to‐student ratio. Approximately 50 per cent of the teachers at the school are familiar with TLF learning objects and have used these in classes. However, the teacher nominated by the school to participate in the Trial had rarely used TLF content in classes.

Students selected to participate in the Trial came from Year 6. It was planned to have individuals or groups using between one and five computers in the classroom. During the Trial, students accessed the collaborative learning activities using a combination of networked desktop and notebook computers.

The collaborative activity was designed to support student learning in the VELS domains of English and Humanities – History. The English component of the collaborative activity focused on thinking processes using ICT. The History component was designed to enable students to compare aspects of life in the past and in the present.

While the teacher was able to assemble a number of resources from the pool of resources provided by the three museums, they noted the absence of more dynamic content (eg video files, audio files) from this pool. The teacher regarded the metadata provided in the title, description and educational value fields as easily viewed, relevant to teachers, helpful in selecting content, and accurate. They found this metadata sometimes useful in an education context or for conducting a lesson, but rarely appropriate for primary school students.

The teacher developed a single collaborative activity, ‘The history of toys’. The activity used ten digital resources, nine of which had been selected and described by the three museums. Two of these resources were sourced from Museum Victoria and seven from Powerhouse Museum.

Table 32: The history of toys

Learning area English; Humanities – History

Theme The past and the present

Collaborative activity The history of toys


M000885

M000503

M000289

M000309

M000399

R5891

M000405

M000286

M000295

M000233

Digital photograph – Girl Sitting on Bonnet of Toy Car, Boy in Driver’s Seat, Glenroy, 1960

Negative – Children in Billy Cart, Merrigum, near Shepparton, about 1910

Hand‐decorated toy boxes containing blocks and plastic toys, 1955–60

Miniature bagpipes, 1952

Formula Fun Racer pedal car, 1955

Child’s pedal car, c1950s

Billycart, 1950–70

Toy Nike Missile, 1955–58

KT toy garage, c1934

Rocking horse, late 19th century


In constructing the collaborative activity, the teacher was the only one in the Trial who attempted to create wiki spaces to describe and discuss each digital resource. While these spaces were limited to questions and answers, this demonstrates the potential of the interactive workspace to allow students to create collaborative definitions and descriptions of resources.

The learning design aimed to include a large number of digital resources. These were usually treated individually rather than in groups. Later in the activity, there were opportunities for students to compare resources. Questions asked by the teacher tested the students’ ability to remember, understand and apply knowledge they had gained. There was no attempt to link the students’ observations and understandings to their own experience. Higher‐order thinking skills such as analysing, evaluating and creating were not encouraged. Nor did the collaborative activity involve students working in pairs or in small or larger groups.

Students represented by 12 avatars participated in the collaborative activity. The teacher observed that all the students participated and were highly engaged with the collaboration, even though the chat tool was sometimes seen as a distraction. Within the activity, students were able to respond individually, using an MS Word document, to the set questions. At least 8 of the 12 students uploaded these files to the collaborative workspace. Some of the students also used the live workspace to present and defend opinions.

The teacher was not aware of the evaluation tools within the online environment that could be used for group or individual feedback. Evaluation of student learning outcomes was consequently dependent on observation. The teacher believed that the collaborative online environment was engaging for students and facilitated collaboration: ‘Students loved it!’ The teacher also deemed it to be very effective as a learning environment and for stimulating students’ learning. The online interface was judged to be effective. The learning design of the collaborative activity included no explicit instructions for students to use the search, timeline or map tools, even though these might have been useful in an activity about the history of toys.

Based on observations about the learning experience, the teacher noted that the live workspace needed to be more effectively organised. They suggested ‘tabs for separate tasks’ and ‘the ability to view [or group] individual student comments and contributions’.

Interestingly, students used the live workspace to evaluate it at the completion of their tasks. One student seemed to want an individual wiki space where they could develop their work over time, separate from the collaborative live workspace. Scootle Sandbox does not currently have this capacity. However, if a student wished to keep a personal workspace that could be updated they could use an upload files capability to achieve this, although versioning might be an issue. Most students were highly positive about the online environment. Comments included: ‘Scootle [Sandbox] is the best search engine if [you] don’t want to go all the way to the museum’ and ‘Scootle [Sandbox] is a really good website and it should be available to everyone!’


School I School I is a coeducational government secondary school in the northern suburbs of Adelaide. The school has an enrolment of 301–400 students. It is a Category 1 school, so while only a small number of students have an Indigenous or language‐other‐than‐English background, 81–90 per cent of students are from a low socioeconomic background.

Students from years 8 and 9 participated in the Trial; of this group, five boys and one girl from Year 9 were interviewed and provided feedback. It should be noted that School I has a gender imbalance across the school: 75 per cent of students are boys.

While the use of TLF content is uncommon in the school, the teacher who participated in the Trial had some experience in using TLF resources in classrooms. At the beginning of the Trial, the teacher suggested that students carry out the collaborative activities in pairs in a computer laboratory. This model of ICT delivery was used in the actual Trial.

The teacher did not identify the specific learning area that the collaborative activity would support in the Trial. The choice of topic – Australian identity – could fit within the learning areas of English or Society and Environment. The teacher stated that specific learning outcomes would include ‘comparing, analysing and understanding the impact on Australian culture of significant people and symbols in Australian history’.

The teacher deemed the digital resources to be easily discovered, easy to use, relevant and accurate. However, the teacher rated the title, description and educational value statements as only sometimes relevant to students, useable in an education context and helpful in conducting a lesson.

The teacher selected seven digital resources, all provided and described by either Museum Victoria, the National Museum of Australia or Powerhouse Museum, to construct the collaborative activity. Before allowing students to participate in the activity, the teacher conducted a number of introductory sessions on the use of Scootle Sandbox.

Table 33: Australian identity

Learning area English; Society and Environment

Theme Australian identity

Collaborative activity Australian identity [learning path 1]


M000177

M000201

M000169

M000342

M000184

M000330

M000870


Phar Lap’s heart, 1932

Australian flag from the World Trade Centre in New York, 11 September 2001

Victa Razor lawnmower, 2004

Liz Ellis’s netball skirt, 1993

Sydney 2000 Olympic Games torch carried by Cathy Freeman

Digital photograph – ANZAC Military Band, c1920

Students were instructed to select two of these resources to analyse and research. The teacher set the following overall task for students: ‘research your chosen icons so you are able to expand on the small amount of information that is already given to you. Write your new information in a comment box below each icon’. Students were instructed not to plagiarise content and instead to use their own words. The teacher set between one and three tasks or questions per digital resource. These ranged from simple comprehension


questions (eg ‘Who was Ned Kelly?’) to more complex research questions (eg ‘Research the history behind the design of our flag’).

The students’ written responses in the collaborative activity were often very limited. Four of the students were only able to write about one digital curriculum resource rather than the two required. Very straightforward questions elicited very straightforward responses (eg Teacher: ‘Who was Phar Lap? Why is he an important part of Australia’s history? Give a brief description of his life’; Student: ‘Phar Lap was a champion racing horse. He was racing from the 1920s to the 1930s. He was bought by Harry Telford. He died on the 5th of April 1932’). Only one student from the group contributed more than one response. Sometimes, these responses did not avoid the plagiarism the teacher warned about in the instructions. Apart from two students who contributed one brief comment as a pair, no evidence of collaborative learning could be ascertained.

The teacher judged students to be engaged with the collaborative activity, and generally on task. Students were deemed to have ‘enjoyed being able to type rather than write. [They also] enjoyed making their own nicknames and selecting an avatar’.

Within the learning design of the collaborative activity, little or no reference was made to how students should interact with the online environment. The teacher had made the decision that Scootle Chat was not to be used by students, so this function was switched off. Students did not use the live workspace to comment on each other’s comments. One of the participants stated: ‘I wouldn’t ever look at anyone else’s answers – just mine’. The teacher rated the basic search and the feedback facility as useful features and functions of the online environment. The advanced search, timeline and map tools were rated as less than useful.

Overall, the collaborative activity may have been compromised by the short amount of time given to the students. They had less than one hour to view, read, comprehend, and conduct research, in addition to including their comments in the collaborative activity. This may have led to students giving a neutral rating to the online environment and their engagement in the collaborative activity (ie 4 on a 6‐point scale). When describing what they would have liked to do more of in the collaborative activity, student comments ranged from ‘It is better than doing it in your books and much more interesting’; to a request for ‘more questions’ and ‘more pictures and some games’.


School J School J is a Catholic coeducational primary school in Adelaide. The school has 501–700 students enrolled. The class selected to participate in the Trial had few students from language‐other‐than‐English, Indigenous or low socioeconomic backgrounds.

To date there has been little use of TLF content in the school. While the participating teacher had rarely used TLF content within the teaching program, she had some experience in using various learning objects on the school’s intranet.

The sample group comprised six students from a Year 6 class. In each collaborative activity, students were to cover the same or similar learning outcomes to those of the rest of the class. Because the Trial involved only six students from the wider student group, the teacher planned no whole‐class presentations, site visits or activities apart from those naturally occurring within the course of study.

The curriculum focus selected for the Trial was Australian history. Within this broad area, a narrower study of the Gold Rush (ie gold, Chinese immigration to and life on the goldfields, and Ned Kelly as an iconic figure) was selected from the teacher’s program of study. This choice was also influenced by the availability of particular digital resources.

While the teacher initially found it difficult to locate appropriate museum content, she was assisted to rethink her initial plans and broaden the topic sufficiently to be able to choose suitable content. Resources ultimately selected were relevant and connected to the unit of work. They were deemed to have added value and to have supported the discussions, group work, book work, individual tasks and research from previous and ongoing lessons. The teacher (and the students) regarded the museum‐provided descriptions and educational value statements as useful and understandable, and the teacher found they provided opportunities to formulate inquiry‐based questions and activities.

The teacher constructed seven collaborative activities for the students. Each activity comprised a single digital curriculum resource and a set of comments, instructions and questions. Four of these activities included digital content from the National Museum of Australia and Powerhouse Museum. All six activities aimed to scaffold the development of higher‐order thinking skills. The activities included learning tasks the teacher had selected to develop these skills, such as the construction of timelines, descriptions of living conditions on the goldfields, comparisons of clothing then and now, construction and appraisal of a gold mining tool, and analysis of tactics used by bushrangers.

The collaborative activities were designed to develop essential competencies in collecting, analysing and organising information; thinking and communicating ideas with others; and making use of emerging technologies. Students were encouraged to engage in analytical discussions and to communicate their findings in independent or collaborative written responses.

Table 34: The Gold Rush in Australia

Learning area Society and Environment

Theme Gold: Gold; Chinese on the goldfields; Iconic Australians

Collaborative activities Board game; Gold mining cradle; Model of the Welcome Stranger nugget; Chinese miners at a campsite; Ned Kelly’s letter; Death mask


M000223

R6166


Hargrave’s gold mining cradle, 1851


M000208

R4617

M000202

M000177


Chinese miners, 1877



The collaborative activities were designed to be extension‐learning activities. Students independently engaged with the activities twice a week in sessions of 45–60 minutes while the teacher taught the remainder of the class. Participating students estimated the total time they spent on the Trial to be between five and seven hours. Students were seated around the periphery of the class with their computer screens visible to the teacher, who was able to lead discussion of each digital resource using an IWB.

During the Trial the group maintained a communication book. After each session important information such as PINs, as well as individual and group reflections, was recorded in the book. This enabled the teacher to gain a quick insight into what the students had learned, gained and enjoyed, or where they had had difficulties. The teacher used the student comments and reflections in the book to assess individual and group progress. The chat tool also provided insight into who was asking and responding to questions.

Students responded to the questions in each collaborative activity and uploaded their own documents and images. The teacher judged that they had achieved the desired outcomes of their participation within the Trial: making good use of their time to collect and analyse information; expanding their ability to think and communicate their ideas; and utilising and exploring emerging technologies. The positive outcomes the teacher identified included the use by students of a broader vocabulary when responding to the learning activities; the development of thoughtful individual responses; and enhanced teamwork.

Apart from some initial issues related to discovery of resources, the technology – including the Scootle Sandbox interface, the individual digital resources and museum‐supplied metadata, and the collaborative online environment – was deemed to have been a positive learning experience for students. A number of tools provided in the Scootle Sandbox interactive workspace were not utilised by the teacher (eg search, timeline, map). Students were highly positive about their experience, in particular their use of the chat tool, the opportunities for collaborative learning, and the feedback components of the interface.

The teacher noted an increase in student engagement and learning over time as the students carried out the collaborative activities. This was felt to be due to the natural interactivity of the online environment, which allowed students to ‘express their thoughts about the resource/question that they had right there with them’ and to ‘use language that connected to the item, question and resource’.

At the conclusion of the Trial, the teacher stated: ‘My Year 6 students absolutely loved this experience! This style of interactive and collaborative learning suits the type of learners today’s students are. As a teacher, you have to be willing to take on new and creative means in motivating your students. Scootle Sandbox was suitable for my group of students and now that I have trialled this with just the 6 of them, I feel quite confident that I would be able to do something similar with the whole class. It is a different type of teaching for me, as I didn’t have a lot of contact with the students one‐to‐one, as I normally would aim to have in a regular classroom environment. My thoughts at this stage would be to make use of this type of learning within rotated literacy groups. I would be able to plan and differentiate for students’ needs and manage assessment of responses/work. As my students progress this year, I aim for all of them to take more responsibility with their learning and perhaps this online environment is just the tool for that’.


School K School K is a Catholic coeducational primary school in rural New South Wales. The school has 200–300 students enrolled. A Year 6 class was selected to participate in the Trial. The class had no students with a language‐other‐than‐English background. Less than ten per cent of the class were Indigenous or had a low socioeconomic background.

Teachers at School K have regular access to and use TLF content in classes. This use has been supported at a whole‐school level by professional development on how to locate, access and use TLF content for teaching and learning. The participating teacher had used learning objects extensively in her classes in all learning areas. She had also used collaborative activities within Scootle when accessing and using digital resources produced by organisations such as Film Archives Australia and the Australian War Memorial.

Due to school renovations, a computer laboratory that would ordinarily have been used as the teaching space was unavailable. It was decided that students would access the content in small groups in the classroom, using between one and five computers.

The curriculum context selected for the collaborative activities was Stage 3 of the NSW K‐6 Human Society and Its Environment Syllabus, specifically the learning outcome ‘SSS3.7 Describes how Australian people, systems and communities are globally interconnected and recognise global responsibilities’. To explore this learning outcome the teacher selected the topic of communication and how it has changed over time.

Having begun with a topic relevant to the New South Wales curriculum and the school teaching program, the teacher found that the limited amount of museum content available was an impediment to selecting relevant and interesting digital resources for the collaborative activity. The teacher acknowledged that it was possible to create a valid collaborative activity by selecting a specific body of content (eg political cartoons), but this might not suit a state or territory in which a syllabus dictated content and sequence.

The teacher contrasted the museum content, which was largely confined to digital images, with the remainder of TLF’s digital resources, which include many video and audio files, anticipating that the museum content would fail to engage students. The metadata associated with each museum resource (description and educational value statements) was deemed to be of a good standard – often useful to teachers and sometimes relevant in an educational context (ie in selecting and using content), but less useful when conducting a lesson.

The teacher constructed a single collaborative activity within the Scootle Sandbox interactive workspace, entitled ‘Development of communication’. It used eight digital resources, two of which were from the sample supplied by the National Museum of Australia.

Table 35: Development of communication

Learning area Human Society and Its Environment

Theme Communication within a global context

Collaborative activity Development of communication


M000202

R6365

M000180

R3174


CSIRAC, 1949

Tracking system console from Orroral Valley tracking station, 1965

Using a pedal wireless transmitter


R2997

R2901

R4554

R5589

R4541

Telephonists at the Brisbane telephone exchange, 1910

Receptionist at work, 1982

Student of Broken Hill School of the Air

SmartModem

ISYS search software

The collaborative activity was designed to develop collaborative learning skills. While in the survey response the teacher did not identify specific higher‐order thinking skills that the activity developed, the students were required to respond to challenging questions, use abstract thinking, draw upon prior knowledge and experience, and develop their own hypotheses about the nature of communication in Australia over time.

The teacher intended the collaborative activity as a vehicle for children to learn from and respond to each other with only limited teacher input: ‘They observed the nature of another group’s response and were able to use it as a model for their own. The teacher’s role was to question and challenge each group’s response to ensure that the content was fully explored. This was completed online so all students could follow the teacher’s guidance whether they had posted that response or not’. Students were required to develop a group visual representation of the changes in communication technologies from the past to the present, and predictions for the future. The visual representation could have been in the form of a poster or an electronic presentation. Most students chose to complete the latter.

After the class had completed the collaborative activity, the teacher recommended that Scootle Sandbox include a function to isolate any one group’s responses among the myriad of others and to then give particular feedback to that group. The teacher also found that the chat tool was more valuable than the feedback function for giving immediate feedback to a student while students were online. The teacher also recommended an ‘alert’ function so that when a group goes online after a break they know if the teacher has provided feedback while they were offline.

In the online environment of Scootle Sandbox, students select and use avatars. Students in the sample group were deemed to be more comfortable offering their ideas through an avatar than using their own identity. For these students, anonymity created a safe environment that enabled everybody to express ideas.

Initially the presence of Scootle Chat proved to be a distraction. While at times students used it too much for social chat, the students’ response rate and the quality of their responses within the overall activity were maintained. Students used the chat tool to ask pertinent questions, often to clarify the meaning of some of the terminology used.

The teacher believed there was evidence that the students had linked this activity to the specific learning unit; one group, for example, discussed global connections in response to a question on communication. The teacher said: ‘They were deemed to have achieved a real understanding of the developing technologies in communication enabling greater access and connection to the modern world. Certainly through their discussion in other areas of the larger unit (eg trade, travel and justice connections), they are referring confidently to the communication factor and linking its role in these other areas’.

Overall the teacher believed that the interactive learning activity was ‘thoroughly enjoyable. While I have always found creative and new ways to work with ICT in the classroom, it has always been based on the students working independently and only sharing the end product – if at all. This process and resource has been exciting due to its very collaborative nature and continuous sharing of the learning’.


School L School L is a Catholic coeducational primary school in New South Wales. The school has 401–500 students enrolled. A group of eight Year 5 and eight Year 6 students were selected to participate in the Trial. They engaged with the collaborative activity individually or in groups of four. The group had no students with a language background other than English and no Indigenous students. Fewer than ten per cent of students in the group had a low socioeconomic background.

Learning objects distributed by TLF are commonly used throughout all levels of the school. Usually teachers become aware of this content through the diocesan website. Students of the teacher participating in the Trial had used learning objects weekly. Typically this had occurred in a computer laboratory or within standard classrooms where the teacher demonstrated content on an IWB.

The curriculum focus used within the Trial was Australian identity. This focus was based on the New South Wales K‐6 Human Society and Its Environment Syllabus. The overarching learning outcome was for students to investigate significant events in Australia’s past and explain the implications of those events for the development of Australian identity, heritage and cultural diversity. A specific learning outcome (ie CSS3.1) was the raison d’être for the learning tasks included in the collaborative activity.

The teacher was able to source content both from within and outside the pool of digital resources supplied by the participating museums. To an extent, the resources available at the beginning of the Trial influenced the topic and focus. The Trial allowed the teacher to engage with digital resources of which she was previously unaware. ‘I love it’, she stated of this ability to engage.

The teacher constructed a single collaborative activity, ‘Who do they think we are?’ The resources selected for inclusion in the activity were suitable for the task, but the teacher felt that she could have constructed a richer learning experience if she had included more non‐museum resources from TLF (ie learning objects and digital resources). Within the resources selected, the resource descriptions and the educational value statements were deemed to be easily viewed and relevant to the teacher. They were deemed to be ‘sometimes’ relevant to students, useable in an educational context, helpful in selecting relevant content, and helpful in conducting a lesson. There may have been a time factor involved in the teacher’s use of the descriptions and the educational value statements, however, as she noted that ‘In future, with more resources and time, I think I would refer to and use descriptions and educational notes more’.

The teacher felt unable to comment on the accuracy of the resources, as she used them more for visual input, and trusted that they would be accurate, given that they came from museums.

The collaborative activity included a number of digital resources that tuned the students into the topic. Other resources allowed them to discover and think more deeply about the topic, encouraging them to postulate characteristics of a good invention. Still others were designed to stimulate independent research on the World Wide Web, to allow students to role play characters from the past, and to allow students to creatively develop their own materials.

A final section of five digital resources encouraged students to engage with five Indigenous artworks and to discuss their relevance to Australian identity. The teacher used the collaborative activity not just to develop these higher‐order thinking skills but also to consciously allow students to explore the features of the Scootle interface (eg ‘Add


comment, then drag your comment so it is BELOW the picture’; ‘Using Scootle Chat, suggest useful criteria for evaluating inventions’).

Table 36: Who do they think we are?

Learning area Human Society and Its Environment

Theme Australian identity

Collaborative activity Who do they think we are?


R4378

R4426

R4380

R4431

R4423

R4765

L363

R5581

R10006

R9989

R10005

R9948

R10019

Hills clothes hoist, 1988

Victa rotary lawnmower, c1953

Ford ‘ute’, 1934

Disposable hypodermic syringe

Black box flight recorder, c1961

Poster for Mambo

Patrick Brennan: the legend of Ned Kelly

Polymer banknote, 1988

‘Dreaming of Matjadji’ (Matjatji) by David Corby Tjapaltjarri, 1975

‘Making Spears’ by Long Jack Phillipus Tjakamarra, 1975

‘Dreaming at Kamparrarrpa’ (Kampurarrpa) by Turkey Tolson Tjupurrula, 1976

‘Flying Dingoes’ by Mick Namararri Tjapaltjarri, 1974

‘Wilkinkarra Men’s camp’ by Long Jack Phillipus Tjakamarra, 1975

The 16 students engaged in the Trial used both the computer laboratory and the school library to complete the collaborative activity. Within the classroom an IWB was used to demonstrate tasks and Scootle Sandbox features. Students were also able to use the IWB when completing a group task (eg a group of students collaboratively undertook the tasks relating to TLF‐ID L363 Patrick Brennan: the legend of Ned Kelly).

Teacher assessment of student learning outcomes was based on observation of individuals and groups, student comments attached to the activity as they progressed through it, and published work resulting from the activity. The Scootle Sandbox interactive workspace enabled the teacher to easily view the work and make individual and group assessments. The activity log was less useful to the teacher as it indicated only if the student had made a comment rather than keeping a record of these comments. While the students used Scootle Chat, the teacher found it difficult to use this for assessment as it did not preserve a record of student interactions.

At the end of the Trial, students were judged to have an increased awareness of Australian icons, yet the time constraints were felt to have prevented more comprehensive student learning. Students’ time‐on‐task was deemed to have improved over the five weeks of the Trial. The teacher felt that: ‘Time spent off‐task was largely due to excitement, being distracted by new options such as chat, getting used to setting their own pace and initial software issues’. Interesting observations were made, such as: ‘slower learners left typing and presentation to more capable students but were actively involved orally. I see this as a strength of the program’. Student work created within the Trial included a design for a shirt for the 2010 Commonwealth games using word processing, presentation or IWB software; a design for a new $200 note; a class survey on Australia’s most valuable invention; and discussion and debate leading to a student vote.


The online environment supported collaboration among this group of students. Because students could see the chat or comments of others, they would often question each other’s contributions. According to the teacher: ‘This was often verbally because they were near one another. They gradually learned to record these comments online. There were also active group discussions of particular digital resources (eg Patrick Brennan: the legend of Ned Kelly)’.

In summing up the students’ experience with the collaborative activities within the Scootle Sandbox interface, the teacher noted: ‘The students loved it. They were totally engaged. This was a sample group – four students from each of the Stage 3 classes (years 5 & 6). In the playground they were forever asking me when it was going to be Scootle [Sandbox] time again. It was interesting to see different kids become interested in different tasks. They much preferred the tasks where they worked in groups of two or three’.


School M School M comprised a teacher working remotely with 17 students from government schools in Tasmania. The students in the Trial came from three schools and were drawn from years 6 to 10. Fewer than ten per cent of students in the Trial had language‐other‐than‐English or Indigenous backgrounds. A greater proportion (21‐30 per cent) had low socioeconomic backgrounds.

As these three schools participate in distance learning, teachers and students are familiar with working online. Approximately 50 per cent of teachers in the three schools are familiar with TLF content. The teacher participating in the Trial is also highly experienced in using TLF content for teaching students within the online learning network.

Students from the three schools engaged with the collaborative activities in a number of ways. Some students worked in pairs in a library or a computer laboratory, while others worked on computers in classrooms. Initially, for the introductory collaborative activity, students were divided into seven small groups.

The areas of the Tasmanian Curriculum that the learning was designed to support were Literacy, and Information and Communication Technology. Within these syllabuses, students were expected to work at an appropriate level, exploring the ways that visual texts are used to convey meanings. Anticipated learning outcomes included the development of written responses to these visual texts, and original visual stories. Students were also expected to explore new ways of working collaboratively online.

The teacher selected digital resources that she believed would suit the age and interests of her students in the three secondary schools. The open‐ended curriculum focus allowed the teacher to select highly interactive, well‐described Papunya artworks from the National Museum of Australia. In evaluating the quality of the digital resources, the teacher judged them to be easily viewed and relevant to teachers, accurate, useable in an educational context, helpful in conducting a lesson, and sometimes relevant to students. In most cases the teacher planned to modify the educational value statements in order to make them appropriate to students’ age and literacy levels.

The three collaborative activities were highly focused. They required students to respond to visual stories communicated in Indigenous artworks. Some resources were used in more than one activity but with a different educational purpose in each case. All but one of the resources came from the pool of resources selected and described by the National Museum of Australia.

Table 37: Visual stories focusing on Aboriginal artworks

Learning area Literacy; Information and Communication Technology

Theme Visual stories

Collaborative activities Storm camps; Yawalurra; Aboriginal visual stories


R9987

R9949

R9773

R9978

R9981

R9950

‘Storm camps on the Rain Dreaming Trail’ by Kaapa Tjampitjinpa, 1978

‘Yawalurra’ (Yawalyurru) by Dinny Nolan Tjampitjinpa, 1975

Message Stick – Scotty Martin, Rodeo Boy, Don’t Say Sorry 2005, Clip 2: Wandjina

‘Snake Dreaming at Naruingya’ by Yumpuluru Tjungarrayi, 1976

‘Mala and the Bad Uncles at Tjikarri (II)’ by Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula, 1974

‘Dreaming at Ilingaringa’ by Billy Nolan Tjapangarti, 1976


Students were initially required to respond to the image rather than reading the descriptions provided. Using their response, each student was required to retell the story told in the image, or tell a new story. Following this, they uploaded their stories to the workspace. After completing this introductory task, the students watched an online video that provided a context for Indigenous Australian art. Each student then had to create an original visual story, adapting symbols and styles used in the artworks they had viewed, and write a narrative explaining the work. The teacher rarely used the in‐built assessment features of the Scootle Sandbox interactive workspace (eg group and individual assessment, and the activity log), as she found other external assessment devices more useful. However, the teacher noted the usefulness of the assessment features.

The teacher had high expectations of students, but recognised that their engagement and success were sometimes dependent on factors beyond her control (eg students’ experiences, the support of the remote school in allocating time to the task). The teacher noted variations in the achievement levels of male and female students in different areas. Girls performed at a high level in the development of the visual stories and narratives, whereas boys adapted more readily to Scootle Sandbox and its tools.

The teacher explicitly incorporated the use of the Scootle Sandbox interactive workspace tools (eg Scootle Chat) into the learning activity. Other technology tools such as image creation programs were also utilised. Communication using Scootle Sandbox was supplemented by the use of email between the teacher and the remote students. Tasmanian schools use WebCT as a learning management system for distance learning. As WebCT duplicates a number of the functions of Scootle Sandbox, the teacher believed that the online environment did not necessarily provide additional functionality or interaction compared with the environment she normally used. It should be noted also that the teacher’s use of the Scootle Sandbox interactive workspace was not synchronous with that of the students, and this may have limited somewhat the potential of the interface to provide dynamic interaction between teacher and student.

The third of the teacher’s collaborative activities, ‘Aboriginal visual stories’, is provided as an exemplar in Appendix 2.3.


Appendix 2 Models of collaborative activity A representative sample of the collaborative activities developed by primary and secondary teachers in the School Trial is provided in Appendix 2. Aspects of each of these models are specifically discussed within the report. Model 2.3 is provided as an example of a ‘distance‐learning model’. The models represent the initial learning design before student collaboration began.

Model 1 – ‘How to have fun!’

Title How to have fun!

Description A range of objects used by students like you to relax, play and have fun. Can you imagine what your playtime would be like if these objects belonged to you? Can you put yourself in their shoes?

Hello and welcome to Scootle Sandbox.

Here is your first task:

1. Watch the video called Teaching children to play

2. While you are watching, take some notes on

The activities you see the children doing

The purpose of the people who made the video

What YOU think are some of the advantages of playing games

3. From your note‐taking, type up your answers below the video by clicking ‘Add Comment’

TLF‐ID R5235

‘Teaching children to play’, 1943 – asset 2 [National Film and Sound Archive]

This is an excerpt from a 1943 black‐and‐white Cinesound review newsreel about vacation play centres in Australia. …

Second task:

Have a look at the following images of toys from different decades. Read the short descriptions next to the images.

What do the objects have in common?

How are they different?

Click on ‘Add Comment’ and share three observations. Take some notes on the dates on which each toy was in use. In your books create a timeline of the objects.

TLF‐ID

R2489

Boys playing marbles at school in 1925 [National Archives of Australia]

This is a black‐and‐white photograph of boys gathered in a circle to play marbles …

TLF‐ID

M000265

Allen’s motorcycling collector cards, 1927–30 [Powerhouse Museum]

These are 52 Allen’s collector cards featuring Australian and international motorcycle riders. …

TLF‐ID M000285

JNF Mercedes‐Benz toy car, 1951–62 [Powerhouse Museum]

This is a toy model Mercedes‐Benz type 300 Adenauer limousine, made by JNF in West Germany between 1951 and 1952. …

TLF‐ID R6376

Knucklebones, collected 1954–55 [Museum Victoria]

This is a set of knucklebones and the box they came in, held by the Australian Children’s Folklore Collection, which is housed in Museum Victoria. …

TLF‐ID M000403

Spiritblade inline skates by Rollerblade, 1995 [Powerhouse Museum]

This is a pair of Spiritblade inline skates with original cardboard packaging, manufactured from plastic and metal by Rollerblade, USA, in 1995. …

Third task:

Is this a clear description of the Spiritblade inline skates? Did you understand what the writer was saying?


Click on ‘Add Comment’ to record your answers.

Use the photo to write your own short, sharp, persuasive description of Spiritblade inline skates. Try to convince all your classmates to buy a pair!

Click on ‘Add Comment’ to share your description beneath the image.

You can also read other students’ descriptions and give them some constructive feedback.

TLF‐ID M000398

Skateboard, 1997 [Powerhouse Museum]

This is a skateboard, manufactured from metal, timber and plastic by Ocean and Australia, Australia. …

TLF‐ID M000263

Shirley Temple doll, 1935–36 [Powerhouse Museum]

This is a Shirley Temple doll, manufactured by Ideal Novelty and Toy Company, USA, between 1935 and 1936. …

Fourth task:

Your teacher will allocate you one of the toys on this page. Your task is to use it as a seed to write a description of playing with that object. HOWEVER, you are not writing as yourself. You must take the perspective of the child playing with that toy at that time in history.

Tips:

The image is a seed only.

You need to find some websites about your game/item.

When you visit websites you must take notes in your book using a reading strategy.

Type your perspective piece in a Word document.

Upload it to Scootle so we can all enjoy. Good luck.


Model 2 – ‘Who do they think we are?’ Title Who do they think we are?

Description Explore Australian characteristics, features and symbols that are recognised both nationally and internationally

Task 1:

Working on your own, find one interesting fact for each of the five Australian inventions pictured below. Add your fact to the picture by clicking on ‘Add comment’, and then drag your comment so it is BELOW the picture. Watch carefully as you cannot add a fact that is already there.

TLF‐ID R4378

Hills clothes hoists, 1988 [Powerhouse Museum]

This is a colour photograph of suburban backyards in Australia taken in 1988. …

TLF‐ID R4426

Victa rotary lawnmower, c1953 [Powerhouse Museum]

This is a colour photograph of an early model Victa rotary lawnmower. …

TLF‐ID R4380

Ford ‘ute’, 1934 [Powerhouse Museum]

This is one of the first Ford Coupe Utility vehicles (commonly known as ‘utes’). …

TLF‐ID R4431

Disposable hypodermic syringe [Powerhouse Museum]

This is a colour photograph showing an example of the original disposable plastic hypodermic syringe and cover, invented in Adelaide by Charles Rothauser (1913–97). …

TLF‐ID R4423

Black box flight recorder, c1961 [Powerhouse Museum]

This is a colour photograph of a sectioned ‘red egg’ black box flight recorder that was designed in 1961 as a voice and instrument recorder for aircraft. …

Task 2:

What makes a good invention? If you were asked to rate the five inventions pictured from most valuable to least valuable, how would you decide? Using Scootle Chat, suggest useful criteria for evaluating inventions. As you ‘chat’ you will need to suggest criteria as well as discuss the ideas suggested by other classmates. The team leader will list the five criteria most people agree with by clicking on ‘Add text’ and then drop and drag the text box so that it sits below the question. The team leader will complete the attached Survey Form and give you a copy to complete. She will share results on Scootle Chat. Which invention will be voted as ‘most valuable’?

Survey – Open content

The team leader will add criteria to this form and give you a copy to complete.

TLF‐ID R4765

Poster for Mambo [Powerhouse Museum]

This is a colour promotional poster designed by Reg Mombassa in 1984 for the Mambo Graphics clothing company. …

Task 3:

This Mambo poster has a wonderful collection of Australian icons and symbols and is easily recognisable as Australian. Australia Post has recently released a set of stamps; based on Aussie inventions, and like all our postage stamps, have an Australian theme. View the stamps at http://www.stamps.com.au/shop/stamps/inventive‐australia. Browse the site to enjoy all things Australian and then consider how you would like to present Australia to the world using only images.

In teams of four you will design a new Mambo ‘Aussie Scene’ to be used on shirts for our 2010 Commonwealth Games team. As you think of designs throughout the Scootle workshop, you can discuss them with your teammates using Scootle Chat.

At the end of the unit, together, you will paint the design you have agreed upon, take a digital photo and upload the image by clicking on ‘Attach file’ at the top of the page. Fellow Stage 3 classmates will vote on the winning design.

Task 4:

Many famous Australians are used to advertise or promote our country nationally and internationally. In pairs, complete the learning object ‘Patrick Brennan: the legend of Ned Kelly’.

Decide on whether you think Ned Kelly should or should not be used to promote our country. Click on ‘Edit text’ in one of the text boxes to contribute to the debate and make the statement more persuasive.

TLF‐ID L363 Patrick Brennan: the legend of Ned Kelly [TLF]

Play the role of a reporter in 1881. Produce a feature article for a newspaper about the life of


Ned Kelly. Review a brief history. …

Task 5:

In pairs, design a new $200 Australian banknote. Decide on a famous Australian t have on your note. Present your note on a PowerPoint slide. You can use word art, insert images and background colour effects in your design. Use the photo as a guide for what to include on your note.

Add your bank note design to Scootle Sandbox by clicking on ‘Attach file’ at the top of the learning path.

TLF‐ID R5581

Polymer banknote, 1988 [Powerhouse Museum]

These are colour photographs of both sides of an Australian commemorative bicentennial ten‐dollar note that was issued on 27 January 1988. …

Task 6: Symbols in Australian art

Aboriginal dot paintings are instantly recognisable as Australian. They are decorative and intriguing … but what is their hidden message? For each painting you can read the guide to the symbols used in the painting by clicking on ‘View content’. Click on ‘Edit description’ to help create a detailed description for people to read when they come to view the artwork in a gallery. You may alter parts of the description previously written by someone else, if you think that it will improve the work.

TLF‐ID R1006

‘Dreaming of Matjadji’ (Matjatji) by David Corby Tjapaltjarri, 1975 [National Museum of Australia]

This acrylic painting depicts a men’s Dreaming that passed through a waterhole site called Matjatji before continuing to Kunatjarri. …

TLF‐ID R9989

‘Making Spears’ by Long Jack Phillipus Tjakamarra, 1975 [National Museum of Australia]

This acrylic painting represents a Dreaming story in which a group of ancestral men camped at Wilkinkarra (Lake Mackay) and lit a fire to flush out kangaroos. …

TLF‐ID R10005

‘Dreaming at Kamparrarrpa’ (Kampurarrpa) by Turkey Tolson Tjupurrula, 1976 [National Museum of Australia]

This is an acrylic painting that depicts five large waterholes and 16 women’s camps. …

TLF‐ID R9948

‘Flying Dingoes’ by Mick Namararri Tjapaltjarri, 1974 [National Museum of Australia]

This acrylic painting has a design superimposed on a map of the escarpment where the dingo became a landform. …

TLF‐ID R100019

‘Wilkinkarra Men’s Camp’ by Long Jack Phillipus Tjakamarra, 1975 [National Museum of Australia]

This acrylic painting depicts an episode in the travels of two men in the Dreaming.

So, who do they think we are? Do they think we are lawnmower‐pushing bushrangers in bright designer shirts, with dot paintings hanging on our walls?

We are this … and so much more. Who we are is always changing. Continue your own search for all things Aussie and be a proud Australian.

I hope you’ve had fun.


Model 3 – ‘Aboriginal visual stories’ Title Aboriginal visual stories

Description Beautiful art work with fascinating stories

Comment:

This area is the main area where everyone gets to see everything. Up till now you have had a separate area where you and your partner/s worked as a small team.

I hope that you find it interesting to follow the film clip link [from Australian screen online]. It runs for about 2 minutes. It will help you get a wider picture on some aspects of Aboriginal art work.

When you have done this, continue with the activities below.

Message Stick – Scotty Martin, Rodeo Boy, Don’t Say Sorry, Clip 2: Wandjina, 2005

Comment: If you follow this link you will be able to listen to Scotty Martin, an Indigenous stockman talk about Aboriginal rock paintings. http://australianscreen.com.au/titles/message‐stick‐scotty‐martin/

Comment: Please load your story from your other group activity under the special painting you had a look at and then wrote a story for. Some paintings will have more than one story added.

Click on ‘Add file’ at the top of the page above the first comments. Please make the subject the name of your special painting. If your file appears at the top and you can drag it to under the resource, please do [so]. If not I will drag it for you.

As people load their stories you may like to respond with a positive comment underneath.

Comment: Have you ever designed a picture to show all the main points of a story? These beautiful Aboriginal paintings show us that this can be done.

I want you to use your own artistic style (you do not have to use the style of these paintings) to create a visual story with a short description of the story written underneath. When you load your work, make the subject the title of your story.

You can use any computer program to draw with, or draw on paper and then scan in the finished product to give you an electronic copy. You will have to select the most important parts of the story to feature.

TLF ID R9987 Storm camps on the Rain Dreaming Trail’ by Kaapa Tjampitjinpa, 1978 [National Museum of Australia]

This acrylic painting depicts Walapurpa, one of many sites on the Rain Dreaming Trail, which commences at Kalipinypa, the site of a massive thunderstorm. …

TLF ID R9981 ‘Mala and the Bad Uncles at Tjikarri (II)’ by Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula, 1974 [National Museum of Australia]

This is an acrylic painting of events at Tjikarri, a place in the Northern Territory associated with a group of ancestral beings who travelled together during the Dreaming. …

TLF ID R9949 Yawalurra’ (Yawalyurru) by Dinny Nolan Tjampitjinpa, 1975 [National Museum of Australia]

This acrylic painting depicts a ceremonial performance of the Yawalyurru (Native Currant) Dreaming story. …

TLF ID R9950 ‘Dreaming at Ilingaringa’ by Billy Nolan Tjapangarti, 1976 [National Museum of Australia]

This acrylic painting shows a huge cave that marks the Dreaming site of Ilingaringa near Lake MacDonald where Minyma Kuniya (the Snake Woman) travelled in ancestral times. …

TLF ID R9978 ‘Snake Dreaming at Naruingya’ by Yumpuluru Tjungarrayi, 1976

The large set of concentric circles in this acrylic painting represents the waterhole at Naruingya. Gathered around are senior lawmen, indicated by the U shapes, conducting ceremonies at the site. The smaller circles are the camps of younger men, with connecting lines indicating the cohesiveness of the groups taking part in the ceremonies.


Appendix 3 Digital resources and learning objects used in the School Trial

TLF‐ID Digital resources Origin Times used

R3179 ‘Cradling, Forrest Creek’, 1853 NLA 1

R9983 ‘Dr Jekyll and Mrs Hyde’ by Judy Horacek, 1991 NMA 1

R9950 ‘Dreaming at Ilingaringa’ by Billy Nolan Tjapangarti, 1976 NMA 1

R10005 ‘Dreaming at Kamparrarrpa’ (Kampurarrpa) by Turkey Tolson Tjupurrula, 1976

NMA 2

R10006 ‘Dreaming of Matjadi’ (Matjatji) by David Corby Tjapaltjarri, 1975 NMA 2

R9936 ‘Dreaming story at Warlugalong’ (Warlukurlangu) by Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, 1976

NMA 1

R9948 ‘Flying Dingoes’ by Mick Namararri Tjapaltjarri, 1974 NMA 2

R4953 ‘Gold buyer, the market price discussed, Eagle Hawk’, 1852 NLA 2

M000217 ‘Gold fields of Australia’ board game, 1853–56 PM 1

R9989 ‘Making Spears’ by Long Jack Phillipus Tjakamarra, 1975 NMA 2

R9981 ‘Mala and the Bad Uncles at Tjikarri (II)’ by Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula, 1974

NMA 1

M000223 ‘Race to the gold diggings of Australia’ board game, 1850–69 PM 2

R9978 ‘Snake Dreaming at Naruingya’ by Yumpuluru Tjungarrayi, 1976 NMA 1

R9987 ‘Storm camps on the Rain Dreaming Trail’ by Kaapa Tjampitjinpa, 1978 NMA 1

R5235 ‘Teaching children to play’, 1943 – asset 2 NFSA 1

R3386 ‘The claim disputed’, c1852 NLA 1

R10227 ‘UnAustralia’ cartoon by Fiona Katsauskas, 2001 NMA 1

R10019 ‘Wilkinkarra Men’s Camp’ by Long Jack Phillipus Tjakamarra NMA 1

R9949 ‘Yawalurra’ (Yawalyurru) by Dinny Nolan Tjampitjinpa, 1975 NMA 1

M000265 Allen’s motorcycling collector cards, 1927–30 PM 1

M000169 Australian flag from the World Trade Centre in New York, 11 September 2001

NMA 1

R3034 Australian gold diggings, c1855 NLA 1

R4423 Black box flight recorder, 1961 PM 2

R2489 Boys playing marbles at school in 1925 NAA 1

M000193 Breastplate belonging to ‘Timothy, Chief of Merricumbene’, 1840 NMA 1

R6367 Bunyip gold nugget, 1972 MV 1

R4617 Chinese miners, 1877 NLA 1

R4844 Chinese quarter on the Ballarat gold fields, 1868 SLV 1

R6365 CSIRAC, 1949 MV 1

M000742 Diary – World War I, Corporal S W Siddeley, 27 Aug 1915 – 23 Sept 1915 MV 1

M000743 Diary – World War I, Corporal S.W. Siddeley, 4 Apr 1915 – 11 May 1915 MV 1

M000870 Digital photograph – ANZAC Military Band, c1920 MV 1

M000883

Digital Photograph – Man, Woman and Two Girls, Backyard, Ukrainian Christmas Day, Newport, circa 1957

MV 1


M000879

Digital photograph – Mother, Father and Baby, Midway Migrant Hostel, Maribyrnong, 1974

MV 1

M000877

Digital photograph – Two Boys in Front of Nissan Hut, Nunawading Migrant Hostel, 1958–1959

MV 1

M000873

Digital Photograph – View of the White Star Liner MV ‘Georgic’ and Passengers, Station Pier, Port Melbourne, 1949

MV 1

R4431 Disposable hypodermic syringe PM 1

R6364 Eight‐hour day celebration banner, 1914 MV 1

R4380 Ford ‘ute’, 1934 PM 1

R4408 Gold diggings board game, c1855 NLA 1

L680 Gold rush: level 2 TLF 1

R4177 Gold scales, c1890 NMA 1

R4176 Gold‐washing cradle, c1850 NMA 1

R6166 Hargrave’s gold mining cradle, 1851 PM 1

R4378 Hills clothes hoist, 1988 PM 1

M000156 Hungarian national dress, 1974 NMA 1

M000285 JNF Mercedes‐Benz toy car, 1951–62 PM 1

R6376 Knucklebones, collected 1954–55 MV 1

M000476 Letter – Mick, Alice, Jim and Auntie Lil to Aircraftman Royce Phillips, Personal, 1941–42

MV 1

M000479 Letter – Private Albert Edward Kemp to Ethel Kemp, 1917 MV 1

M000184 Liz Ellis’s netball skirt, 1993 NMA 1

R9773 Message Stick – Scotty Martin, Rodeo Boy, Don’t Say Sorry, 2005 NFSA 1

M000208 Model of the Welcome Stranger nugget, 1858–85 PM 2

M000177 Ned Kelly’s death mask, 1880 NMA 2

M000202 Ned Kelly’s Jerilderie letter, 1879 NMA 2

L363 Patrick Brennan: the legend of Ned Kelly TLF 1

R9166 Peach’s Gold – Eureka, 1983: ‘Victoria the golden’ NFSA 1

M000201 Phar Lap’s heart, 1932 NMA 1

R5581 Polymer bank note, 1988 PM 2

R4765 Poster for Mambo PM 2

R2901 Receptionist at work, 1982 NAA 1

M000263 Shirley Temple doll, 1935–36 PM 1

M000398 Skateboard, 1997 PM 1

R5589 SmartModem PM 1

M000403 Spiritblade inline skates by Rollerblade, 1995 PH 1

R4554 Student of Broken Hill School of the Air PM 1

M000330 Sydney 2000 Olympic Games torch carried by Cathy Freeman PH 1

R2997 Telephonists at the Brisbane telephone exchange, 1910 NAA 1

M000180 Tracking system console from Orroral Valley tracking station, 1965 NMA 1

R3174 Using a pedal wireless transmitter NLA 1

M000342 Victa Razor lawnmower, 2004 PM 1

R4426 Victa rotary lawnmower, c1953 PM 1


Appendix 4 Glossary ACMA Australian Communications and Media Authority

ANZ‐LOM Metadata application profile used by TLF

Atom 2.0 The name Atom applies to a pair of related standards. The Atom Syndication Format is an XML language used for web feeds, while the Atom Publishing Protocol (AtomPub or APP) is a simple HTTP‐based protocol for creating and updating web resources. (Source: Wikipedia)

avatar A computer user’s visual representation of him/herself, usually using an icon

CAMD Council of Australasian Museum Directors

CC Curriculum Corporation

CCA Collections Council of Australia

COAG Council of Australian Governments

Creative Commons

Offering your work under a Creative Commons licence means offering some of your rights to any taker, and only on certain conditions. Each work licensed under a Creative Commons licence comes with some base rights, which can be modified by mixing and matching the licensing terms. A combination of these terms can be attached to a licence, to define exactly how you are happy for your work to be used (eg through an Attribution licence, or Attribution‐NonCommercial‐ShareAlike licence).

Creative Commons +

Creative Commons + is Creative Commons license + Another agreement. It is NOT a new license, but a facilitation of more permissions beyond ANY standard Creative Commons licenses.

Creative Commons + is a protocol providing a simple way for users to get rights beyond the rights granted by a Creative Commons license. For example, a work's Creative Commons license might offer non‐commercial rights. With CC+, the license can also provide a link by which a user might secure rights beyond non‐commercial rights ‐‐ most obviously commercial rights, but also additional permissions or services such as warranty, permission to use without attribution, or even access to performance or physical media.

Darwin Core Darwin Core is a Biodiversity informatics data standard that consists of a vocabulary of terms to facilitate the discovery, retrieval, and integration of information about organisms, their spatiotemporal occurrence, and the supporting evidence housed in biological collections.

DC Dublin Core

DC Extended Application profile that extends the 15 standard Dublin Core metadata elements

DCMES Dublin Core Metadata Element Set

DCMI Dublin Core Metadata Initiative

Digital resource

The Le@rning Federation’s digital curriculum content is created in two formats: learning objects and digital resources. Digital resources are digitised items (assets), such as museum artefacts, artworks, archival documents, photographs, archival and contemporary moving images, maps, posters, songs and speeches. Each digital resource includes an educational value statement, written for teachers, that comprises a description and contextual information about the item. For the purposes of this project, TLF sourced items from the National Museum of Australia, Powerhouse Museum and Museum Victoria.

DTD Document type definition; the ‘building blocks’ of an XML language

Dublin Core The Dublin Core Metadata Element Set is a standard for cross‐domain information resource description. It provides a simple and standardised set of conventions for describing things online in ways that make them easier to find. Dublin Core is widely used to describe digital materials such as video, sound, image, text, and composite media such as web pages.

ESL English as a Second Language


F2F Face‐to‐face [learning]

ICT Information and communication technology/ies

IEEE LOM IEEE working group’s standard for Learning Object Metadata

IP Intellectual property

ISO International Organization for Standardization

IT Information technology

IU Internet usage

IWB Interactive whiteboard

Jurisdiction School education systems and sectors within Australia and New Zealand

K/P Kindergarten / Prep

K‐6 Kindergarten to the end of Year 6

Learning object

The Le@rning Federation’s digital curriculum content is created in two formats: learning objects and digital resources. Learning objects are interactive multimedia resources that combine still and moving images, text, audio and animation. They aim to engage and motivate students and support their learning of concepts and skills in a range of curriculum areas in Years P–12.

LOM Learning object metadata

LORAX Learning Object Repository Access and Exchange

M&EDCE Museum & Education Digital Content Exchange [project]

MARC MARC Relator terms available for use as refinements of Dublin Core elements are available from the Library of Congress. The use of MARC Relator terms will allow designers of metadata applications to distinguish between different types of Contributor, such as Illustrator or Translator.

MCEETYA Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs

Metadata Data that describes other data. The term may refer to detailed compilations such as data dictionaries and repositories that provide a substantial amount of information about each data element. It may also refer to any descriptive item about data, such as a title field in a media file, a field of key words in a written article or the content in a meta tag in a HTML page.

Metadata object

Descriptive metadata (objective or subjective) created for a content object

Metadata registry

A repository containing metadata about content objects, ie metadata objects

MEX [TLF’s] Metadata Exchange

MV Museum Victoria

NAA National Archives of Australia

NFSA National Film and Sound Archive

NLA National Library of Australia

NMA National Museum of Australia

NSW New South Wales

OAI The Open Archives Initiative (is an attempt to build a low‐barrier interoperability framework for archives (institutional repositories) containing digital content (digital libraries). It allows people (Service Providers) to harvest metadata (from data providers).

OAI PMH Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting


OpenSearch OpenSearch is a collection of technologies that allows publishing of search results in a format suitable for syndication and aggregation. It is a way for websites and search engines to publish search results in a standard and accessible format.

PM [The] Powerhouse Museum

PMI chart Plus‐Minus‐Interesting chart

Q&A Questions and answers

QA Quality assurance

QC Quality control

RSS ‘Really Simple Syndication’: web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works

SA South Australia

Scootle Publishing environment used by TLF for distribution of learning objects and digital resources

Scootle Sandbox

Interactive and collaborative workspace; second‐generation publishing environment used by TLF

ScOT Schools Online Thesaurus

Sector Groups of schools within and across jurisdictions run by government, the Catholic Church or that are independent schools

SHEX Sharing Exchange

SLV State Library of Victoria

TLF TLF

URI Uniform Resource Identifier

URL Uniform Resource Locator

VELS Victorian Essential Learning Standards

VET Vocational Education and Training

WebCT A proprietary virtual learning environment

Web 2.0 Second generation of web development and design that facilitates communication, secure information sharing, interoperability and collaboration

wiki Interactive web space/page that allows users to add and update content from their own browser

XML Extensible Markup Language


Appendix 5 References Anderson, LW & Krathwohl DR (eds) 2001, A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing: A Revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, Longman, New York.

Australian Communications and Media Authority 2009, Australia in the Digital Economy, Report 2: Online Participation. Downloadable at www.acma.gov.au/web/standard/pc=pc_311655.

Bloom, BS (ed) 1956, Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, the Classification of Educational Goals, Handbook 1: Cognitive Domain McKay, New York.

Collections Council of Australia 2007, Australian Framework and Action Plan for Digital Heritage Collections, Version 0.C3. Downloadable at: www.collectionscouncil.com.au/Portals/0/Australian%20Framework%20and%20Action%20Plan%20for%20DHC_Version%200.C3.pdf.

Collections Council of Australia 2008, Digital Collections Summit 2006: Final Report, Version 1.0. Downloadable at: www.collectionscouncil.com.au/Portals/0/Digital_Collections_Summit_FinalReport_v1.0x.pdf.

Crook, C, Cummings, J, Fisher, T, Graber, R, Harrison, C, Lewin, C, Logan, K, Luckin, R, Oliver, M & Sharples, M 2008, Web 2.0 Technologies for Learning: The Current Landscape – Opportunities, Challenges and Tensions, Becta, United Kingdom. Downloadable at: http://partners.becta.org.uk/upload‐dir/downloads/page_documents/research/web2_technologies_learning.pdf.

Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations 2008, ‘Online curriculum resources and digital architecture’, www.deewr.gov.au/Schooling/DigitalEducationRevolution/Pages/Onlinecurriculumresourcesanddigitalarchitecture.aspx.

Gardner, H 1993, Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences, Basic Books, New York.

Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs 2005A, Pedagogy Strategy: Learning in an Online World. Downloadable at: www.mceetya.edu.au/verve/_resources/ICT_LearningOnlineWorld‐PedagogyStrategy.pdf.

Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs 2005B, Statements of Learning for English. Downloadable at: www.curriculum.edu.au/verve/_resources/SOL_English_Copyright_update2008_file.pdf.

Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs 2006A, Statements of Learning for Civics and Citizenship. Downloadable at: www.curriculum.edu.au/verve/_resources/SOL_Civics_Copyright_update2008.pdf.

Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs 2006B, Statements of Learning for Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Downloadable at: www.curriculum.edu.au/verve/_resources/SOL_ICT_Copyright_update2008.pdf.

Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs 2006C, Statements of Learning for Mathematics. Downloadable at: www.curriculum.edu.au/verve/_resources/SOL_Maths_Copyright_update2008.pdf.

Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs 2006D, Statements of Learning for Science. Downloadable at: www.curriculum.edu.au/verve/_resources/SOL_Science_Copyright_update2008.pdf.


Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs 2008A, ‘Joint ministerial statement on information and communications technologies in Australian education and training: 2008–2011’, www.aictec.edu.au/aictec/webdav/site/standardssite/shared/JMS%20on%20ICT%20in%20Australian%20Education%20and%20Training.pdf.

Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs 2008B, The Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians. Downloadable at: www.curriculum.edu.au/mceetya/melbourne_declaration,25979.html.

New Media Consortium 2009, Horizon Report: 2009 K‐12 Edition. Downloadable at: www.nmc.org/publications/2009‐horizon‐k12‐report.

TLF 2008, TLF – Sustaining Supply of Content for the Digital Education Revolution. Downloadable at: www.thelearningfederation.edu.au/verve/_resources/Sustaining_supply_of_content.pdf.

TLF 2009, Scootle User Guide for Teachers, TLF, Melbourne.

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