In Support of Excellence

It's all about the students

LAMS Trial - Students giving Positive Feedback

Introduction to the LAMS Activity Planner

At the end of 2010 LAMS released two significant features which make this software far more effective for Higher Education. First the LessonLAMS website where a teacher can register and get a LAMS environment for building curriculum with 30 free seats for students. Then the Activity Planner explained in this YouTube video. LAMS is now definitely learning design for time strapped academics .
I discovered this wonderful new software tool in 2005 and have been tracking its development since.  In June 2011 I organized a visiting teacher from Macquarie University (home of LAMS) to run two workshops on LAMS and 50 academics were very interested. We could only accept 10 into a trial for the rest of 2011 and the results are coming in. There is a ground swell for use in 2012. Please read the typical student feedback from the project so far.

Project Feedback

Assoc. Prof. Mike Keller of the School of Agriculture Food and Wine reported back to his students:

“Your responses indicated that the use of innovative teaching techniques was effective. Out of 57 comments that mentioned LAMS directly or indirectly, 44 were favorable and 13 were either unfavorable or equivocal. Overall, your participation in the trial and SELT responses to it gave me encouragement to use it again.”

Dr. Laura Hardefelt from the School of Animal and Veterinary Science developed an innovative learning sequence using scenario-based learning. Laura is intending to use 24 of these “virtual patients” in her course next year. Colleagues beta tested this. A representative comment was:

“The student has to come up with problem lists and differentials based on the case and their own reading. This will begin the step from academia into action, translating theory into practice. This is an excellent bridging tool, well done.”

Ms Tanya Wittwer, Lecturer in Public Health, used LAMS with a practical class of 80 students.

“The students were very positive about using the LAMS sequence, with the most common comment being that it provided an interactive experience and was easy to use. Many also said it was fun.” 

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Allan Carrington has been awarded the 2012 Office of Learning and Teaching (OLT) Australian Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning.  His citation read: “For sustained commitment to inspiring, challenging and mentoring academics to teach with activity-centric pedagogies and the latest learning technologies, to enrich the student experience.” He is also winner of the 2011 University of Adelaide Award for Excellence in Support of the Student Experience. This website was developed to support these applications and is now his ePortfolio.
Since 2003 Allan has been a Learning Designer with the eLearning Development Team supporting the university faculty.