ASCILITE NEWS

BE SIG Webinar: Exploring GenAI’s scope in business education: Text, images, and avatars

Date: Tuesday 4^th February 2025
Time: 12 – 1pm AEDT / 2 – 3pm NZST
Join Zoom Meeting here

Join us for an engaging session examining some of the scope of GenAI’s role in advancing teaching and learning in business education. Led by Dr. Guy Bate, Professional Teaching Fellow at the University of Auckland Business School, this workshop focuses on three themes: Text, Images, and Avatars. Through live demonstrations, including tools like GPT Vision and Soul Machines avatars, you will gain insights into how AI can support critical reflection, analyse visual trends, and enhance personalized learning experiences.

This session offers an opportunity to explore practical approaches to integrating AI into your teaching practice and to discuss its potential impact with like-minded colleagues. Perfect for educators and researchers looking to thoughtfully incorporate AI into their pedagogy.

Audrea Warner, Sandy Barker, Danielle Logan-Fleming
BE SIG leads

OEP SIG Webinar: What’s on for Open Education week and more

Date: Tuesday 4 February 2025
Time: from 2:00pm AEST
Register to attend here

Anyone interested in open education is welcome to join – feel free to forward this invite to your colleagues.

Agenda:

What’s on for Open Education Week 2025 (3^rd – 7^th March)
Call for EOIs to join the OEP SIG team
Share what each of us (or our institutions) are prioritising this year
Community input – what do you want to see from the OEP SIG in 2025?

Application are invited for ASCILITE’s 2025 Community Mentoring Program

Applications (EoI) in the 2025 CMP are now being accepted and are due by 23 February 2025 (Sunday). Both potential mentors and mentees are required to submit an EOI to express interest in the program and the successful applicants for CMP will be matched with a mentor or mentee in the week of 3 March 2025.

The ASCILITE CMP has been operating since 2003 and over 200 members having taken part to date. The program is recognised by members for its value in coaching, facilitating and networking for both mentors and mentees (read more about CMP here). It aims to provide mentoring opportunities across a number of fields including educational technology, academic development, learning development, faculty education, early career research, graphic design and programming. Applications for mentors or mentees can be completed via this form.

This year there will also be an opportunity to join a new stream of the CMP Program – the Research Mentorship Program for Third Space in partnership with the Learning DESIGN SIG. It is aimed at third space professionals wanting to get started with research. In addition to personalised monthly mentorship, the program will feature a series of expert-led online mini hourly workshops, each focused on a key area of professional research development. This initiative will accommodate up to 10 participants, with mentorship provided by Learning Design SIG Leaders and up to 4 mentors.

A combined informative/Q&A webinar will be held for CMP at 1pm (Sydney time) on 13 February 2025 (Thursday). Register here

Kwong Nui Sim, Pennie White, Lisa Bugden
CMP leads

New TELall Blog post

Our first blog for 2025 comes from Associate Professor Simon Knight (UTS) who talks about the implementation of guidelines for ethical reflection in research reporting. Simon worked with editors on three key journals to develop a paper (“Emerging Technologies and Research Ethics: Developing Editorial Policy using a Scoping Review and Reference Panel”) which addresses the critical ethical challenges emerging with artificial intelligence and other technologies in academic research.

Read the post here

Sandy Barker
TELall Blog lead

TELAS Reviewer Certification workshop (online)

The Technology Enhanced Learning Accreditation Standards (TELAS) are a set of internationally benchmarked standards designed to assess the quality of online learning, particularly in relation to the tertiary sector. They provide institutions with the means to assess and evaluate the affordances of their online learning environments and thereby guide quality enhancements. For more information about TELAS visit our website.

Our workshop supports your knowledge of the standards and is the first step to being a certified TELAS reviewer. No matter what your role is at your institution you will find these workshops informative and interactive.

Our next workshop will be online in Zoom (split across two half days);
Dates: February 25th and 26th (10am – 1.30pm AEDT)
For fees and registration, go here.
Any questions feel free to email TELAS Admin.

Lisa Jacka, Elaine Huber, Chris Campbell
TELAS leads

Contextualising Horizon 2025

ASCILITE’s Contextualising Horizon will kick off its 2025 workshop series in February. Contextualising Horizon aims to identify the technologies and practices likely to be of importance to the Australasian Higher Education sector in the next 12–18 months.

The workshop series kicks off with a group exploration of the Social, Technological, Economic, Environmental, and Political (STEEP) trends impacting Australasian Higher Education. You need not be an expert in the area, and everyone is invited to contribute. The workshops are designed to surface the issues affecting the tertiary education institutions in the region through brainstorming and discussion. There will be two STEEP sessions. While the sessions will build on one another, you are encouraged to attend any one or both sessions:
Register for STEEP Session 1: Wednesday 19^th February 2pm – 4pm AEDT
Register for STEEP Session 2: Friday 21st February 12pm – 2pm AEDT

In March, Contextualising Horizon will host the Technology and Practice Workshops in which we present the final STEEP trends and collectively examine the technologies and practices likely to address higher education’s challenges. There will be two sessions. Attendance at both is encouraged, but it is not required:
Register for Technology and Practice Session 1: Tuesday 18^th March 12pm – 2pm AEDT
Register for Technology and Practice Session 2: Friday 21st March 12pm – 2pm AEDT

Contextualising Horizon is an ASCILITE initiative. Find out more and read the reports on ASCILITE’s Contextualising Horizon page.

Chris Campbell
CH lead

OTHER NEWS

Contemporary Approaches to University Teaching MOOC Semester 1

The CAUT MOOC was awarded the inaugural 2024 CAULLT/HERDSA Award for Outstanding Leadership in Research and Development in Higher Education. If you missed out on this MOOC then Semester 1, 2025 enrolments have opened for the Contemporary Approaches to University Teaching MOOC. There are 24 modules to choose from!

This course is for those who:

teach in higher education anywhere in the world
want content designed by learning and teaching experts
seek to enhance their teaching and their students’ learning
are interested in scoping the course for their institution’s professional development program
are sessional, contract or continuing teachers.

You can choose which modules you explore and when, but we recommend one of the four pathways: new to teaching, enhancing student learning, enhancing your teaching practice or leading learning and teaching. An enhanced feature is that participants completing any of the four pathways can receive a digital badge for that pathway. Study is self-paced in two-hour modules that can be completed over a semester.

MOOC content is available to universities to share and adapt under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. The course is presented under the auspices of the Council of Australasian University Leaders in Learning and Teaching (CAULLT) and is led by Professor Agnes Bosanquet (Torrens University) and A/Prof Marina Harvey (Macquarie University).

Enrol here: https://canvas.instructure.com/enroll/EJM6JY

17 February 2025 – 4 July 2025

EDEN 2025 Annual Conference Registration and Submission Now Open!

EDEN 2025 Annual Conference will be held at The University of Bologna, Italy, 15-17 June. The conference theme is “Shaping the Future of Education in the age of AI Empowering inclusion, innovation and ethical growth”.

Registration is now open, don’t miss the Early Bird pricing! You can submit your paper until March 15, 2025.

30th International Council for Open and Distance Education World Conference

The 30th ICDE World Conference is being held in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand from 10 to 13 November 2025. The theme for the conference is Ako: Exchanging ideas for inclusive, scalable, and sustainable education.

Register here now for an opportunity to connect, learn, and collaborate on the forefront of global education.
Key dates

Submission closes 11:59pm (NZDT), Sunday 16 February 2025.
Notification of acceptance into the program from Monday 7 April 2025.
Early bird registration closes 11:59pm (NZST), Friday 19 September 2025.