Bronwyn Hegarty
Employer: | Otago Polytechnic | ||
Occupation: | Principal Lecturer in Tertiary Teacher Education | ||
Other roles: | Educational designer, researcher, online facilitator, project manager. | ||
Nationality: | New Zealander | ||
Country: | New Zealand | ||
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- My professional role
I am a Principal Lecturer in Tertiary Teacher Education at Otago Polytechnic, Dunedin, New Zealand. I coordinate several courses in the Graduate Diploma in Tertiary Education (GDTE). Learning and Teaching in Practice, is one I developed with my colleague Paul Left using WikiEducator. I am also a facilitator for Assessing Prior Learning (APL) for the GDTE, guiding learners to put together a portfolio of their teaching experience for assessment.
- Interests
I'm pretty geeky when it comes to open educational practices and like to teach using a number of Web 2.0 tools. Philosophically, I prefer to share and collaborate when creating resources. Encouraging my students (academic staff at my institution, and educators in many locations) to feel comfortable playing with and using open technologies is a passion of mine. So I have used blogs and wikis in my teaching and my learning design always includes activities where learners get to try out different Web 2.0 tools and interact with each other. I have a number of learners using eportfolios on a variety of platforms, and giving feedback on their work in these environments has helped me to remain open to new approaches. Another area that fascinates me is reflective practice and guiding people in their reflective writing is an ongoing part of my professional work. It is surprisingly hard to reflect deeply.
I developed a Three Step Reflective Framework for my Doctorate research to guide reflective writing, and now use this in my teaching.
Bronwyn's email and profile at Otago Polytechnic, and some References to my work.
Contents
Examples of externally-funded projects
- Online Information Literacy modules - http://oil.otago.ac.nz/oil/index.html
- Digital Information Literacy - research - http://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/publications/tertiary_education/80624
- eLearning Guidelines http://wikieducator.org/PDFL
- Tanz eLearning managers – Graduate Certificate in Applied eLearning.
- eLearning Adoption – self-efficacy and working practice http://edcounts.squiz.net.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/58132/ALET-final-Report-25-10-06.pdf
- Research Annual Report 2011.
Recent Research outputs
- Hegarty, B. (2015). Attributes of Open Pedagogy: A Model for Using Open Educational Resources. Educational Technology. [1]
- Hegarty, B. (2013). Reflective Practice: What is it really? [2]
- Jeffrey, L. & Hegarty, B., Kelly, O., Penman, M., Coburn, D., & McDonald, J. (2011). Developing Digital Information Literacy in Higher Education: Obstacles and Supports. Journal of Information Technology Education, 10, 383 - 413. [3]
- Hegarty, B. (2011). A Framework to guide professional learning and reflective practice. Doctor of Education thesis, Faculty of Education, University of Wollongong. [4]
- Hegarty, B. (2011). Is reflective writing an enigma? Can preparing evidence for an electronic portfolio develop skills for reflective practice? In G.Williams, P. Statham, N. Brown, B. Cleland (Eds.), Changing Demands, Changing Directions. Proceedings ascilite Hobart 2011. (pp.580-593). [5]
- Hegarty, B. (2011) How teachers use blogs for professional development and enhancing digital capability. Full conference paper accepted and presented at the international conference on eLearning Futures, Auckland, 2011. Available at: [6]
- Blackall, L., & Hegarty, B. (2011) Open Education Practices: A User Guide for Organisations. AKO Aotearoa funded publication. Available at: [7]
- Hegarty, B., Penman, M., Kelly, O., Jeffrey, L., Coburn, D. and McDonald, J. (2010) Digital Information Literacy: Supported Development of Capability in Tertiary Environments. Final report. Ministry of Education, Wellington. ISBN 978-0-478-34214-7 (web) [8]
- Jordan, S. & Hegarty, B. (2010). Laxatives. (2nd Edn). In S. Jordan (Ed), Pharmacology for Midwives, the Evidence Base for Safe Practice. Hampshire: Palgrave.
History using WikiEducator
My first introduction to WikiEducator happened in September 2006 when I added myself as a volunteer to help create a wiki version of the elearning Guidebook. At the time WikiEducator was hosted by the Commonwealth of Learning. I became interested in the Commonwealth of Learning initiatives in 2004 when I helped organise the PCF3 and DEANZ (Distance Education in New Zealand) conference in Dunedin. One of the outputs of the conference was a paper proposing strategies for helping meet the United Nations Millenium goals.
Course development using WikiEducator
Since 2007, as an Educational Developer, I have both created and helped academic colleagues at Otago Polytechnic to create courses on Wikieducator. Namely:
- Learning and Teaching in Practice
- Graduate Diploma in Tertiary Education
- Flexible Learning
- Assessing and Evaluating for Learning
- Constructing Courses to Enhance Learning
- GCTLT
- Flexible Learning Guidebook
- The Anatomy and Physiology of Animals
- HIVAIDS
- Evaluation of eLearning for Best Practice - now Evaluation of eLearning for Effective Practice
- Designing for flexible learning practice
- Facilitating online communities
- Digital information literacy
- Food Safety
WikiEducator Council
I was elected to the WikiEducator Council in 2008 (my campaign page) to advocate for the following:
- Better collaboration between global communities to share resources;
- More diverse educational resources - produced in partnership for communities who do not have online access;
- Educational approaches to support the United Nations Millenium goals;
- Wider use of Wikieducator nationally in New Zealand for sustainable tertiary education;
- More practical and streamlined use of resources on WikiEducator;
- Usability testing and research evaluation of Wikieducator resources for effective learning;
- Improved functionality of the Wikieducator platform for the "cautious" educator;
- More versatile design tools and features for the wiki pages.