I gave my presentation first thing this morning and it seemed to go down well.  A few people had some nice things to say, which is always nice to hear.  Sometimes I think I’m so far behind what other people are doing, then you get a day like today when you realise that we’re all just trying to figure things out as we go along and that we all have a lot to learn from each other.

I think it’s a pity that we’re not doing more together.  I’m not saying that everyone should be doing the same thing, but there’s a lot of overlap where we could share ideas, discuss what’s worked, in what contexts and with which students.  I had a few very interesting conversations with people who are struggling with some of the same issues in their departments, that we have in ours.  I hope that these conversations will continue over time and that we can begin building relationships between our higher education institutions that continue to evolve and grow long after this conference is over.

Today I was lucky enough to see the following presentations:

• Keynote: Pandora’s box, cornucopia or Trojan horse? The introduction of technology in higher education
• What do our institutional leaders perceive as e-learning success?
• Creating a true community of academic practice through research based learning
• The implementation of technology-enhanced problem based learning methodology in geographically dispersed learners
• The challenges of teaching anatomy for a kinesiology context
• Teaching sociology.  What am I doing?

All in all, today’s presentations were extremely thought provoking and at the very least, interesting.  There wasn’t one presentation where I left disappointed.

I mentioned earlier that I’m staying at an old prison that’s been converted into a backpackers.  I thought I’d share a little something of the place I’ve called home for the past few days.  The building is a national monument, so the proprietors can’t make any changes to the structure, which sounds great but it does have it’s drawbacks.  Luckily this is the kind of place I quite like.

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