ASCILITE NEWS

Call for Papers and Reviewers now open for ASCILITE 2022

The call for papers for the 2022 ASCILITE conference is now up and details are provided on the conference website.

This year’s conference theme is “Reconnecting relationships through technology” and in line with the theme, the Conference Organising Committee would like to focus on the value and importance of connecting, of strong relationships, empowered by educational technologies. It’s a central part of higher education; relationships between teachers and students, within student groups, with our core purposes and campuses, between professional and academic staff, and even between all of us and technology.

Full details on submission types, sub-themes and presentation formats are available on the conference website here and the submissions portal will be opening soon to upload submissions. The call for papers closes on 2 July 2022.

Call for Reviewers

The 2022 Conference Organising Committee are inviting a large number of volunteers for the important work of reviewing conference submissions. The intellectual strength of ASCILITE conferences derives in part from the rigour of our peer review process and each submission will be reviewed by a minimum of two reviewers. If you are interested in participating, you fill find further details on the conference website here. The call for reviewers will close on 2 July 2022.

Call for Associate Editors for the Australasian Journal of Educational Technology (AJET)

The editors of AJET invite applications for new Associate Editors to join the existing editorial team of the Australasian Journal of Educational Technology (AJET) – the official journal of ASCILITE.

The context

AJET seeks expressions of interest for the role of Associate Editor. Associate Editors work with the Lead Editors to oversee the review process of the papers and other work of the journal. This call for Associate Editors is to continue to further build our team diversity and expertise, and to ensure the workload is sustainable. This is a global call. EOIs from Associate Editors in all regions, including outside of Australasia are welcome.

Broad responsibilities – Associate Editor

The main role of associate editors is to take carriage of manuscripts assigned to them after initial screening by a lead editor. They then assign the articles to suitable reviewers, manage and determine the outcome of the review process, and liaise with authors about their manuscript prior to passing the manuscript to a copy and layout editor. Associate Editors are senior academics with considerable responsibility in ensuring the high quality of the journal papers. Associate Editor’s need to be able to act on peer review evaluations and make difficult decisions about rejecting, asking for changes, or accepting submissions. Associate Editors also have opportunities to shape the direction of the journal, engage in strategic planning, and work on strategic projects. Associate Editors are expected to commit a small amount of time each week to ensure the papers assigned to them progress through the system.

Further details

You will find further details about this call on the AJET website here.

Call for Contributions: Contextualising Horizon 2021 – 2022

ASCILITE’s Contextualising Horizon Initiative invites expressions of interest for section co-authors and educational technology and practice exemplars for the 2021 – 2022 Contextualising Report. Expression of interest close 30 April 2022, with the intent to have the full report published in June 2022.

Section Co-authors

Section co-authors are responsible for writing a one-page analysis of one of the STEEP (Social, Technological, Economic, Environmental, and Political) trends or a two-page analysis of one of the educational technology and practice trends. Writing is anticipated to take place in May 2022. Prospective co-authors should complete the report author EOI. The form provides a detail listing of this year’s STEEP and technology and practice trends and asks for a brief statement of qualifications in the areas elected.

Educational Technology and Practice Exemplars

Contextualising Horizon seeks case examples of the 2021-2022 educational technology and practice trends. Exemplars illustrate the application of these technologies and practices across the sector. To nominate yourself or a colleague, complete the Exemplars Nomination Form. We also encourage you to distribute the call for exemplars throughout your networks.

The following were this year’s top 7 trends:

Redefinition and Interrogation of Longstanding Pedagogical Practices (e.g., lectures and exams)
Self-Care and Well-Being for Staff and Students
Blended Models of Learning
Ed Tech Infrastructure to Enable Learning
Accessible Content and Digital Equity
Co-Design for Higher Education
Microcredentials

About the Project

Contextualising Horizon aims to identify the educational technologies and practices likely to impact the Australasian tertiary sector. The Contextualising Horizon Report brings together analysis of the trends impacting tertiary education and insights and exemplars of the significant educational technologies and practices.

New TELall Blog Post on using badges to promote student engagement

In our latest blog post, Melissa Fanshawe and Katie Burke (University of Southern Queensland) discuss the perennial problem for online educators of how to engage with online students and the role of badges in promoting student engagement.

Reminder: ASCILITE Live! webinar on embedding industry practices in authentic assessment design, 12 April 2022

Date and time: 12 April at 12pm AEST.

Embedding industry practices in authentic assessment design has multiple benefits for students in higher education, including improved attitudes to learning, self-reflection and application to their own lived experience. Such student engagement activity extends to multiple stakeholders, enabling multiple means of translating theory into practice. It also assists universities to design assessments that encourage academic integrity.

Under this model, academic staff are also better able to balance their industry research partnerships with their teaching, creating greater alignment with performance goals. Industry and government are also beneficiaries where student projects form part of broader research initiatives designed to produce policy and practice guidelines as outcomes.

In this webinar, Dr Kevin Argus and Dr Jessica Helmi from the Graduate School of Business and Law at RMIT University share their experiences of embedding industry practices in authentic assessment design to optimise outcomes for students, industry, academics, and the university overall.

Key takeaways from this session include:

How industry-embedded authentic assessment design contributes to academic integrity.
The importance of value propositions for industry that align learning outcomes and practice outcomes.
Examples of award winning and newly created multi-industry partnerships created to sustain engagement at the course/program level.
Alumni feedback indicating industry-embedded authentic assessments are among their program highlights.
Student feedback that credits authentic assessment with yielding workplace opportunities.

Dr Kevin Argus (Senior Lecturer, Graduate School of Business and Law, RMIT University) teaches Marketing and Design Thinking within the Executive MBA and MBA programs. Kevin’s approach is guided by his adoption of the teaching, research, practice nexus (TPRN). Kevin’s aim in GSBL is to create impactful industry projects with learning, research and practice outcomes that align with our school and college core values of social impact, innovation and technology and industry engagement aligned with sustainability goals. Implementing sustainability projects requires a balance of research, teaching and practice (Schneider, et. al 2018). The TRPN has enabled achievement of KPI’s, via projects shared between teaching-engagement focused academics and research-engagement focused academics, creating a collaborative scholarly culture where value-creation has become a mutual pursuit, rather than siloed.

Dr Jessica Helmi (Lecturer, Graduate School of Business and Law, RMIT University) will share her example of embedding industry practice into assessment design via her lead in the co-creation of a new undergraduate Bachelor of Business Core course, BUSM2577 Integrated Perspective on Business Problems. Jess discusses how a collaboration of business partners has co-created mutual value across all stakeholders in this pursuit.

Jess and her team work with four Industry Partners (a mixture of for-profit and not-for-profit organisations) who provide an innovative shared business challenge for students to work on. The shared challenge revolves around the theme of loneliness as a lived experience, which informs the three authentic assessments in the course.

You will need to register for this event here.

BE-SIG webinar recording available on connected learning at scale and transforming the student experience

This session discussed Connected Learning at Scale, a 5-year large-scale, collaborative strategically funded project between educational developers, learning designers, students, alumni and academic teaching partners. The aim is to transform the student learning experience. Commencing in 2019, this project has redesigned and successfully delivered over 80 Business School units. Transforming the ways in which students engage with information and knowledge (principle 1), actively participate and learn through connected learning experiences in large and smaller groups (principle 2) and redesigning assessment towards more authentic modes (principle 3), underpinned by engagement with critical global, local and personal challenges. In this session, the presenters shared the thinking behind the design of the project, project and evaluation processes, outputs which include design patterns and a range of examples of the changes they have implemented.

The session was presented by the University of Sydney team; A/Prof Peter Bryant, A/Prof Elaine Huber, Dr Stephanie Wilson, Dr Dewa Wardak and Dr Jessica Tyrell.

You can view the recording here.

Expressions of Interest for Editors, The Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice

The Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice (JUTLP) is seeking expressions of interest for a series of Senior and Associate Editors for three-year terms. JUTLP is a peer-reviewed journal which publishes papers that add significantly to the body of knowledge describing effective and innovative teaching and learning practice in the higher education environment.

The Journal aims to provide a forum for educational practitioners in a wide range of disciplines to communicate their teaching and learning outcomes in a scholarly way. Its purpose is to bridge the gap between journals covering purely academic research and more pragmatic articles and opinions published elsewhere. JUTLP has experienced significant growth in its operation, reputation, and external citations: our Scopus CiteScore has risen from 1.1 in 2020 to 1.8 for March 2022. The Journal is currently indexed by Web of Science and Scopus. It can be found in the ERIC database and has more than 300 reviewers.

Visit the JUTLP website for further details on the journal, the EOIs and the position descriptions for each of the editor roles. The timeline for appointments is as follows:

Expressions of interest close: 30 April 2022
Internal review and shortlisting: 14 May 2022
Interviewing shortlisted candidates by Zoom: from 14 to 30 May 2022

Job opportunity: Principal Learning Designer, University of Queensland

The Institute for Teaching and Learning Innovation (ITaLI) at UQ is looking for a Principal Learning Designer to be based in the Faculty of Science at its St Lucia Campus. Under the broad direction of the Senior Manager, Academic Services, Faculty of Science, the position holder will design curriculum, assessment, active and flexible pedagogies, to enhance teaching quality in courses and coursework programs, and support and enable academic staff across the Faculty of Science to do the same.

Key responsibilities include but are not limited to:

Provide leadership on the application of appropriate pedagogic and curriculum design to the development of innovative and successful courses in the service of enhancing the student learning experience.
Design, develop, implement and evaluate pedagogical, curriculum and assessment approaches, both online and face-to-face and advise and assist academic staff to do the same.
Develop and prepare learning and teaching resources and advise and assist academic staff to do the same.
Collaborate with faculties, the Institute for Teaching and Learning Innovation, Library, industry partners and UQ staff, to implement and improve institutional approaches and support to enhance student learning and the student experience.
Identify and promote innovative approaches to teaching and learning.
Contribute to the identification and design of tools, processes and templates to streamline teaching services with emphasis on good curriculum, pedagogical and assessment design.
Maintain knowledge of current practices and future opportunities in online and on-campus teaching and learning across the university and higher education sector and communicate this knowledge to the wider University community.
In partnership with the Science Faculty and ITaLI manage delivery timelines and advise of any potential risks to on time completion of work.

The Learning Designer participates in the Learning Design Community of Practice coordinated by the Institute for Teaching and Learning Innovation (ITaLI). Under the Leadership of the Director, ITaLI, the Institute provides leadership, engagement and advocacy in educational innovation, teaching excellence and learning analytics, and aims to transform teaching and learning across the University through the delivery of faculty and executive prioritised, teaching and learning projects and services. ITaLI addresses critical areas of unmet need in teaching and learning by bridging the gap between the exponentially‐expanding discipline of higher education teaching and the increasing complexity of teaching to assist University teaching staff and improve the learning experience of students.

For further details and a full job description, visit the UQ website here. The closing date for applications is 19 April 2022.

CRADLE Seminar Series on new directions for feedback seeking research and practice

When: Tuesday 3 May 2022 @ 2pm – 3.30pm AEST.

CRADLE’s next presentation is with Professor David Carless, University of Hong Kong and Honorary Professor who will discuss the concept of feedback seeking and its impact on teaching, learning and motivation.

Feedback research has increased dramatically over the last twenty years, yet feedback seeking seems to remain relatively under-exploited territory. Feedback seeking is defined as purposely seeking information about one’s own level of performance, interpreting it and applying it (Anseel et al., 2015). In this talk, Prof Carless will discuss some work-in-progress on feedback seeking and attempt to chart some new directions. The main project is a systematic literature review on empirical research on feedback seeking in undergraduate education, aiming to synthesize strategies, motives and outcomes of students’ feedback seeking (Leenknecht & Carless, in progress). A second longitudinal project examines transcripts of assignment-related feedback seeking interactions between a high-achieving undergraduate and her teachers (Carless & Young, in progress).

Feedback seeking research is typically conceptualised through pro-active social behaviours, cost-value frameworks and achievement goal theories of learning versus performance goals. Motives for feedback seeking are mainly seen as comprising learning motives, impression management motives or introspective ego-building motives. Strategies are generally classified as involving direct inquiry e.g. asking a question, indirect inquiry e.g. starting up a conversation, and feedback seeking monitoring e.g. comparing work against that of peers, exemplars or previous work. Conceptual implications focus on the interplay between feedback seeking, teacher and student feedback literacy; and the prospects for cross-fertilization between feedback seeking in organizations, medical education and broader higher education. The role of teachers is highlighted as being important in promoting students’ feedback seeking behaviours. Implications for practice relate mainly to how feedback seeking can be developed into a more sustained element of undergraduate curricula, and some of the strategies that teachers might deploy in encouraging students’ feedback seeking.

You can register for this (free) event here.

Open Education Week 2022 Recordings Available

The Open Education Week 2022 (UK), which ended in March has made available some of it’s key webinar recordings and you may view 7 of the recordings on the OEW’s playlist here.

OEW 2022 was hosted by the European Digital Learning Network (EDEN) and this was the sixth year in which OEW celebrated the global Open Education Movement. OEW’s main goal is to highlight how the education, and teaching and learning process has evolved and identify educational opportunities that are and will be more relevant in the Open Education Movement. During the week, 30 experts discussed some of the key and ongoing topics on the education and e-learning environment with more than 600 people from 54 different countries in attendance.

EDEN 2022 Annual Conference – Call For Papers

The 2022 EDEN Europe Conference titled “Shaping the digital transformation of the education ecosystem in Europe” will be hosted by Tallinn University, Estonia, on 20-22 June 2022, virtual participation will be an option. Also, a PhD symposium led by a panel of experts will be held in the framework of the Conference.

Some of the topics that will be present in the conference and are part of the Call for Papers are the following: Digital ecosystem for education, the evolution of online and distance learning, the transformation of face-to-face teaching, through online, to blended learning and digital transformation in educational organizations among others. Below you will find important dates concerning the Call.

Deadline for submitting papers, posters and active sessions: 15 April, 2022
Deadline for submitting abstracts to PhD symposium: 15 April
Notification of acceptance: 28 April, 2022
Submission of camera-ready papers: 3 June, 2022

There are three different paper submission categories:

Research and theory papers
Best practice papers / country reports
Work in progress / discussion papers

Short formats:

Poster: 2 pages describing a poster presented in A0-A1 format in the conference lobby
Workshop: 2 pages describing the target group and content a practical activity lasting 45-90 minutes in a computer lab
Demonstration: 2 pages describing a live demonstration of a software or an online course (15 min max)
Synergy session: 2 pages describing a 30-minute roundtable, panel discussion or other form of synergy building activity
Training session: 2 pages describing the target group and content of a hands-on training activity

The papers will be submitted through EasyChair. As the papers will be double blind peer reviewed, the authors should leave their names and affiliations blank in the submission, and take care to avoid details in the article that could be used to identify the authors.

Full details are available here.

Draft Program Released for the Open Education & Research Conference, ALT (UK)

The Association for Learning Technologies (UK) has published its draft program for its first ever hybrid Open Education Conference. Organised to be Co-Chaired by the Global OER Graduate Network. The program will showcase proposals submitted by the community looking at research, practice and policy within the following themes; Pedagogy in a time of crisis, Open textbook, Open in Action, Open research and Wildcard proposals.

There are over 80 sessions scheduled across the 3 days with workshops, presentations and open spaces to look forward to, highlighting both the value and limitations of Open Education in a (post) pandemic world.

#OER22 Registration for the first hybrid edition of @A_l_t’s Open Education and Research Conference starts at just £99 for #altc members.. The conference takes place over 3 days, 26 – 28 April 2022. Checkout the program here.

ALT (UK) News Digests 646 and 647

For those interested in what’s happening with technology enhanced learning in the UK, ASCILITE’s peer organisation – the Association of Learning Technologies, publishes a fortnightly News Digest. Links to their latest News Digests are as follows: Issue 646 released on 28 March and Issue 647 and released on 4 April 2022.