ASCILITE NEWS

ASCILITE 2022 Conference Updates

With only two weeks to go until we kick off, and over 400 delegates registered, ASCILITE 2022 is going to be the place to be!

The program is available and registrations remain open until the end of this week for in-person attendance, and the end of next week for virtual attendance.

A streamlined workshop program is also still available for registration.

The conference management platform, Cvent’s Attendee Hub, will go live over the next few days for registered delegates. Your phone or email are required for verification and access. Delegates will receive an email when the hub goes live.

Please note that you must add the Newcomers Breakfast to your agenda by November 25th if you wish to attend.

Weekly conference updates are being sent to delegates via email through Cvent, so if you have not received any of these please ensure that your email server can accept email from noreply@cvent.com

Please also keep an eye on Twitter for updates (if it remains ‘up’!).

The Battle of the LMSs

The Battle of the LMSs is a fun event being held at the 2022 ASCILITE conference. Through a series of challenges, harnessing the expertise of Australasia’s best educators, learning designers and education technologists, we will answer the age-old question – Which is the best LMS?

In the lead-up to the conference, we are seeking to find the LMS champions for the battle through a pre-conference design challenge. The pre-conference challenge is open to anyone attending the ASCILITE 2022 conference in person or online. If you do this as a team, at least one member of the team must be registered for the conference.

You have just over one week to design a short learning activity in the LMS of your choice and upload a screencast video describing your design and the decisions that you made. See details of the brief for the activity in the TELedvisors’ post ‘Are you the ultimate LMS designer?’

The design videos will be shared via Twitter and in other ASCILITE/ TELedvisor channels and judged by interested members of the public, particularly the ed. design and ed. tech community. Voters can rate the designs on:

1. How well does the learning design create opportunities for student learning?
2. How well does the learning design encourage student collaboration?
3. To what extent are the materials, design and instructions accessible, diverse and inclusive?
4. How creative, innovative or interesting is the use of the available technologies?
5. How easy would it be to repeat, sustain and/or share the design?

Prizes will be given for the best submission in each of these categories.

The finalists from this challenge will then compete in real time during the live conference panel session to be crowned The Ultimate LMS Designer.

Timeframe

Upload video by 12:00 pm (midday AEDT) on Tuesday 29 November 2022. Cast votes until 9 am AEDT on Tuesday 6 December.

For full details check out the TELedvisors’ post ‘Are you the ultimate LMS designer?’

New TELall Blog posts:

Reconnecting Relationships Through Technology: How Important is it to Institutions?

Professor Dominique Parish, Macquarie University investigates how the 2022 ASCILITE conference theme “Reconnecting relationships through technology” resonates with HE providers with emphasis on the 45 ASCILITE institutional members.  <read more>

Batman: The online clinical classroom

Jennifer K. Green, Marla S. Burrow, Camille Manning, and Shelley van der Krogt from Massey University share their 2021 ASCILITE award winning innovation to enable demonstration in the hybrid learning environment.  <read more>

Invitation to attend the ASCILITE Annual General Meeting (AGM)

The 2022 Annual General Meeting (AGM) for ASCILITE will take place during the annual conference on Monday 5th December at 12:30pm AEDT.
All current members are cordially invited to attend the meeting. The room will be advised in the conference program. Check the conference agenda for any change to the meeting time closer to the event.

We do hope you can join us where we present the 2022 Executive election results, review ASCILITE’s financial position and seek approval from members for next year’s budget.

OTHER NEWS

EDEN Conference 2023

EDEN / Digital Learning Europe have recently released the details of next year’s conference.  It will take place 18-20 July 2023 at Dublin City University, hosted by National Institute for Digital Learning (NIDL).  Click here to view the details of the conference.

EduGrowth e-assessment Roundtable

ASCILITE currently have an MOU with EduGrowth, who work to grow technological innovation in education.  In June 2022, The EduGrowth e-assessment roundtable was attended by A/Prof Chris Campbell (ASCILITE President) and Dr Sandy Barker (ASCILITE Executive) to represent our community in this important piece of work.

The report How do we balance assessment security and flexibility in e-assessment has now been released and can be found at this link.

ASCILITE looks forward to continuing to work with EduGrowth next year.

Anonymous Survey:  Perceived impacts of COVID-19 for Academics and Researchers in Australia

Researchers from the University of Wollongong and Macquarie University are inviting academics and researchers working in Universities across New South Wales, Australia to participate in an anonymous survey study investigating the perceived impacts of COVID-19 on core workplace responsibilities (i.e., teaching, research, governance), wellbeing, job satisfaction and career development. The research team includes: Dr Elena Vasseleu (elenav@uow.edu.au), Dr Amanda Rita Gigliotti (agigliot@uow.edu.au), A/Prof Agnes Bosanquet (agnes.bosanquet@mq.edu.au) and A/Prof Steven Howard (stevenh@uow.edu.au).

Disruptions resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic continue to have lasting impacts on Australian Universities. While an emerging international literature base has sought to examine and highlight the nature and extent of impacts experienced by academics and researchers working within these institutions, there remains a need to better understand considerable and often disparate impacts to academics and researchers with diverse personal and professional circumstances. Collection of these data from a broad sample of academics will provide the opportunity to further examine whether and to what extent such impacts may differ by gender, academic discipline and career stage. Findings from this study may serve to replicate and reinforce findings from other interdisciplinary or international samples and may yield unique insights into the impacts experienced by academics and researchers working in Australian contexts.

This research project has been approved by the University of Wollongong Social Sciences Human Research Ethics Committee (2022/298).

For further information and to participate in this study please click the link below.

COVID-19 Impact Survey<https://uow.au1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_42ULsBiQnptwcaq>

TEL Survey – Field-Based Ecology or Environmental Science Disciplines

Are you an instructor in field-based ecology or environmental science disciplines at a university or other higher education institution? Have you used, or considered using, technology in your teaching? Help us learn more about your experiences by filling out our short survey: https://melbourneuni.au1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_daMWWkQggl6I2I6

I’ll also be discussing a potential new framework to help us learn from ‘failures’ in technology-enhanced projects at ASCILITE 2022, and would love to get your additional comments on your experiences in developing and implementing mobile and technology-enhanced learning on the discussion Padlet: https://unimelb.padlet.org/elisabone2/hejrb4vigw2pz3s5

For more information, contact Dr Elisa Bone at The University of Melbourne, elisa.bone@unimelb.edu.au