Mackay Senior Leadership Conference

More than 70 senior leaders and external presenters attended the annual CQUniversity Senior Leadership Conference in Mackay last week. The conference, which ran from Wednesday 22nd to Friday 24th June, covered a range of strategic topics, including Engagement, Leadership, Research, Multi-City operations and Dual-Sector issues.

On Friday, there was an ICT presentation titled “The Connected University – Emerging Collaboration Technologies in Learning and Teaching”, and Jeff Santamaria, Roy Pidgeon and Shaune Sinclair from Information Technology Directorate teamed up with Professors Rob Reed and Mark Looi for the 90 minute session.

Rob Reed led off with feedback from students about the degree of support and engagement required to fulfil their needs in online/distance learning mode, and related this to attrition amongst distance and online students. He demonstrated an online “collaborative learning environment” using a pilot version of the Moodle 2 Learning Management System (LMS) and he advocated for improved engagement with students by effective use of tools such as video clips, live chat and email.

Mark Looi outlined the optimal use of the Cisco “Webex” online and video collaboration tool for learning, teaching and administration. Staff from the School of ICT, who recently commenced a pilot of the Webex system for staff collaboration within the school, demonstrated a mock exercise in effective collaboration with staff from across Central Queensland and interstate campuses participating. The Webex session was then opened up to conference members, and a number of senior staff, including the Vice-Chancellor and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic & Research) participated live in the Webex interactive session from within the venue.

Jeff Santamaria demonstrated integration of the Webex collaboration tool with the Moodle 2 LMS – a “live” session hosted by Netspot in Adelaide with help from Cisco engineers. The University is planning to migrate to Moodle 2 early next year, and Jeff showed a new initiative by Cisco to integrate their Webex online collaboration toolset seamlessly with Moodle 2. Jeff also gave an overview of the importance of building mobile applications to better connect and engage with our students.

Shaune Sinclair provided an overview of developments in live broadcast as well as recorded video content management, including potential application at CQUniversity. He walked the audience through a “roadmap” to bring CQUniversity up to the latest standards and practices in live and recorded video content.

Roy Pidgeon provided an overview of CQUniversity's new Staff Portal, demonstrated key features including the ability to integrate with normal desktop functions, communities, news and discussion forums, and outlined how Google Docs integrates with the Portal.

Overall, The Connected University presentation was a great success. The presenters were “swamped” by members of the audience seeking more information, generating much discussion throughout the rest of the conference on the big ICT concepts presented during the session.