ASCILITE NEWS

2020 ASCILITE Awards

Congratulations to all the winners of this year’s ASCILITE awards. The calibre of nominations across all awards this year was exceptionally high and the entire ASCILITE community extends their congratulations to each and every award recipient.

Life Member Award

The ASCILITE Life Member Award recognises the significant service and/or sustained contribution of an ASCILITE member to the Society. Life Member Awards are the highest recognition of achievement made by ASCILITE and the award is made only when an appropriate candidate meets the criteria.

This year, Prof Sue Gregory (University of New England) received the award for her outstanding contribution to the Society over an extended period from 2012 to present.

Sue was the conference co-convenor for ASCILITE’s first virtual conference in 2020 and is also the co-convenor of next year’s ASCILITE 2021 conference at the University of New England. She is the longest serving member of the ASCILITE Executive, having joined the committee in December 2012 and serving as Vice President from 2015 – 2017 and again in 2019 to present time. Sue led the Community Mentoring Program continuously for 7 years from 2013 to 2019 and simultaneously chaired the ASCILITE Awards committee continuously from 2013 to present time.

Innovation Award

The ASCILITE Innovation Award celebrates work undertaken by an individual or team of people in support of the exemplary and research informed use of technologies for teaching and learning in tertiary education. Innovation is defined as a new idea, device or process or something original that “breaks into” teaching and learning in the tertiary sector. The winners of the award this year are:

Marla S Burrow (Massey University) for Batman: The Online Clinical Classroom
Preet Singh (Massey University) for Leveraging technology for virtual learning experiences
Grace Y Qi and Kevan Loke (Massey University) for Scavenger Hunt Game: Chinese Language Camp – student interventions to increase student engagement

Emerging Scholar Award

The winners of the 2020 Emerging Scholar award are Cadey Korson and Carolyn Gates (Massey University).

This award recognises outstanding contributions to the exemplary use of, and/or research into, technologies for teaching and learning in tertiary education as an emerging scholar in at least two of the following categories; emerging professional mentoring or leadership, emerging noteworthy or quality research or sustained innovations.

AJET Distinguished Reviewer Award

This year’s winner of the AJET Distinguished Reviewer Award is Professor Jorge Luis Bacca (Fundación Universitaria Konrad Lorenz, Colombia).

Jorge has reviewed for AJET since 2019. He has consistently provided reviews of highest quality and responded within the time frames set by AJET. Terms that describe his reviews include “insightful, helpful to authors, thorough, compassionate, contextual, professional, thoughtful and constructive”. On behalf of the AJET editorial team and the ASCILITE community we thank Professor Bacca for his generous contribution of time and expertise.

2020 Conference Awards

Congratulations to the following winners of this year’s conference awards:

Best Full Paper: Scott Morton, Petrea Redmond and Peter Albion for Dealing with Diversity: Factors discouraging participation of Māori and Pacifica females in ICT education.
Best Concise Paper: Philip Uys and Mike Douse for The post-pandemic blended university in the time of digitisation.

A draft version of the full conference proceedings is available on the conference website here. A final version is currently being prepared and will be available in the coming weeks.

D2L / ASCILITE Research Grant Recipients

In November of this year, D2L and ASCILITE formed a partnership to offer research grants to ASCILITE members to fund research and/or development of projects in the area of technology enhanced learning and teaching in higher education.

The D2L / ASCILITE grants are only available to ASCILITE members with a maximum funding of $5,000 available for each project. D2L contributes $5,000 per year with ASCILITE contributing the balance of $5,000. A total of $10,000 is available in each of the two years. Grant applicants have one year to complete their projects with a final report due in March of the following year.

Research/scholarship grants that involve more than one university are encouraged and at least one member of the research team must be an Early Career Researcher (within five years of PhD or equivalent completion).

In 2020, there were two project team recipients of research grants:

Kathryn Coleman (University of Melbourne), Kate Mitchell (University of Melbourne), Patsie Polly (University of NSW) and Christine Slade (University of Queensland) for Faculty assessment practices in response to COVID-19: opportunities for innovative futures.
Carol Johnson (University of Melbourne) and Alana Blackburn (University of New England) for Video feedback in assessment: A protocol for tertiary music teaching.

Expressions of Interest invited in ASCILITE’s 2021 Community Mentoring Program

Applications (Expressions of Interest) in the 2021 Community Mentoring Program are now being accepted and are due by 1 February 2021. Both potential mentors and mentees are required to submit an EOI to express interest in the program, and will be matched with a mentor or mentee in early February.

The ASCILITE Community Mentoring Program (CMP) has been operating since 2003 with over 185 members having taken part to date, and is recognised by members for its value in coaching, facilitating and networking for both mentors and mentees. 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.

You will find full details of the program on the ASCILITE website here along with the application forms.

An ASCILITE Live! webinar information session on the CMP will be conducted early in the new year.

New TELall Blog Post: Mapping the digital literacies required for success in HE

In our latest TELall post, Associate Professor Joyce Koh (University of Otago) and Dr Kwong Nui Sim (Auckland University of Technology) acknowledge how Information Communication Technologies (ICT) have long supported academic practices and have become even more important with the migration to online learning that has resulted from the COVID-19 pandemic. However, they argue that the embedding of ICT competency development within content learning is generally weak as there is an implicit assumption and expectation for students to be digitally competent (e.g., Oliver, 2013; Sim, 2018).

Final Reminder: ASCILITE Live! webinar: Partnerships for scaled online learning and the unbundling of the traditional university

Date and Time: 15 December 2020 @ 1pm – 2 pm and and again at 8pm – 9pm AEDT.

You’ll find session start times for your local time zone here – 1pm session and 8pm session.

Abstract:
The Australasian Journal of Educational Technology (AJET) ‘special issue’ editors believe that Higher Education has a great need to provide for sustainable and online futures. Starting right now. This webinar extends the discussion in the recently published AJET special issue on partnerships for scaled online learning and the unbundling of the traditional university.

These sessions will explore the emerging models from the ‘coal face’ and well-researched reports and experiences. You will have the opportunity to hear from the authors, and how it is going since they wrote the papers. There are clearly opportunities for transformational thinking and practice as we move towards a digitally integrated and collaborative futures for a post-COVID world. Partnerships will be an important part of the new landscape.

Session login: You can login to this webinar here.

If you would like to share this event with colleagues, use this webpage.