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The International Conference on Information and Communications Technology 2008

The International Conference on Information and Communications Technology 2008 will address the many challenges and new directions presented by technological innovations in educational settings. Following in the tradition of previous ICICTE conferences, ICICTE 2008 will bring together an international community of scholars and practitioners in a forum setting. Opportunities for discussion on current thinking and practices in applications of technology to education are enhanced by the limited number of participants. We are pleased to note that Campus-Wide Information Systems, the UCFV Research Review and Interactive Learning Environments will again devote special issues to selected papers from ICICTE. Simon is a member of the scientific committee of ICICTE and last year he was recognised as a friend of the conference.

Dr Simon Shurville's newly published paper...

Campus Wide Information Systems have just published 'Educational and Institutional Flexibility of Australian Educational Software', a viewpoint paper which I wrote with Barry O'Grady and Peter Mayall of Curtin Business School.

"Well-designed educational software can be a key enabler for flexible education, although embedding it at an institutional level brings its own demands for change management. Here we define flexible educational software to mean applications that provide both educational and institutional flexibility. Educationally flexible software should enable educators to design and manage effective learning experiences and materials and provide an interface that is appropriate for educating. Meanwhile it should provide students with opportunities to learn at their convenience and provide an interface dedicated to learning. Institutionally flexible software should provide institutions and their developers with facilities to adapt and integrate the product with local administrative processes, IT platforms and teaching culture. It should also help universities to join effective federations and partnerships with other institutions, which requires adherence to open standards and tolerance of diverse coding languages and platforms, including those that are popular in other nations." (Shurville, O'Grady and Mayall, 2008, p 76).

The paper is part of a special issue on Australasian E-Learning which I co-edited with Professor Ken Fernstrom (University College of the Fraser Valley, British Columbia), Dr Michael Henderson (Monash) and Barry O’Grady (Curtin)

Reference
Shurville, S., O'Grady, B. and Mayall, P. (2008) 'Educational and Institutional Flexibility of Australian Educational Software', Campus-Wide Information Systems, Vol. 25 No. 2, pp 74-84.



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