ASCILITE NEWS

Call for Applications in the 2021 – 2022 D2L / ASCILITE Research Grants

ASCILITE is pleased to continue its two year partnership with D2L and to now open the call for 2021 – 2022 Research/Scholarship grant applications.

The D2L / ASCILITE grants are only available to ASCILITE members. A maximum funding of $5,000 will be made available per project although it is possible that less funding may be made available per project in order to fund a higher number of projects. D2L contributes $5,000 per year with ASCILITE contributing the balance of $5,000. Funding was made available in 2020 – 2021 and is now available for 2021 – 2022.

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.

At least one member of the research team must be an Early Career Researcher (within five years of PhD or equivalent completion).

Full details of the grants, including eligibility criteria and an application form can be found on the ASCILITE website here.

AJET’s Outstanding Growth Continues

The editors of ASCILITE’s peer reviewed journal, the Australasian Journal of Educational Technology (AJET) are happy to report that the journal continues to be highly ranked across a range of ranking systems this year. AJET has maintained its SJR Q1 ranking and increased it’s score from .915 in 2019 to 1.397 in 2020 as a result of a marked increase in citations per article. This means that AJET is the 5th (of 245) highest impact journal based in Australia (all disciplines), and #1 highest impact journal in education in Australia. AJET is also ranked #15 on the Google Scholar list of top publications in the field of educational technology.

The editors would like to thank all ASCILITE members for their continuing support of our esteemed journal and the significant contribution it makes to research in technology enhanced learning. And, of course, we would also like to thank the previous AJET lead editors, our Associate Editors, reviewers, and authors for their contribution to such a great outcome.

Call for Nominations to the Executive Committee

Current ASCILITE financial members are now invited to stand for election to the ASCILITE Executive Committee.

ASCILITE members who value the services and professional community engagement offered through our not-for-profit Society, and who believe they have the time, commitment and dedication to work in a voluntary capacity to contribute toward a variety of ASCILITE activities, are invited to nominate for election to the Executive Committee.

You will find details of current Executive Members here and a summary of Executive roles and the work of the Executive is outlined in the document Prospective Executive Committee Member Information.

For further information on the work of the Society or the Executive Committee please contact the President, Vice-President or any Executive Committee member. You may access committee member email addresses from the Executive Committee listings on the ASCILITE website. Committee members will be happy to answer your questions by phone or email.

The Call for Nominations is open to all financial members from 30 August to 21 September 2021 and voting will be open to all financial members from 22 September to 8 October 2021. Members will be sent candidate information with an online voting link on 22 September and the results of this ballot will be announced at the ASCILITE Annual General Meeting at ASCILITE 2021

You will find further details of the election schedule, positions available and nomination forms on the ASCILITE website here.

Final Reminder for Guest Editors for a 2022 AJET Special Issue

Expressions of interest from individuals or teams interested in guest editing a special issue of the journal in 2022 are due tomorrow. Expressions of interest of up to 500 words should include the following information:

Names and affiliations of guest editor(s), including experience and brief biographical details
Proposed special issue theme, including possible topics
The relevance of the theme to the scope and coverage of the journal
The significance of the theme in advancing the field of educational technology in tertiary education

The expressions of interest will be reviewed by the AJET Lead Editors. Full proposals will then be requested from shortlisted EOIs.

Please email your expression of interest to editors@ajet.org.au by 31 August 2021 and if you have any questions about this process, please the editors.

TELAS Sessions open for registration

We are delighted to invite you to ASCILITE’s first information session and certification workshop on the TELAS Framework. As many of you would be aware, TELAS stands for the Technology Enhanced Learning Accreditation Standards which have been developed through peer consultation with many of our members and education leaders across the sector.

Information Session

The Information Session is intended for those who wish to familiarize themselves with the TELAS Framework, the peer review process and what’s involved in becoming a Certified Reviewer. The aim of the two hour session is to (1) raise awareness of good practices in the design of quality online learning, as rationalized in the TELAS Framework; (2) introduce you to the affordances for quality online learning design against the TELAS Framework measures; and (3) introduce you to the TELAS review process.

Workshop One: 2 September 2021 @ 9:30am – 11:30am AEST FULL!
Workshop Two: 29 September 2021 @ 10am – 12pm AEST | Other time zones

You may register here. Please select the 29 Sept session as the 2 Sept session is now full and note that there is a $30 fee to cover administrative costs. The same fee applies to ASCILITE members and non-members.

Reviewer Certification workshop

We will also be conducting the first full day TELAS Reviewer Certification Workshop split across two days in October for those who wish to become TELAS Certified Reviewers. Participants will be required to perform pre-work and undertake follow-up reviews to become certified. This workshop is scheduled across the two following days:

28 October @ 12pm – 3pm AEST | 1pm – 4pm AEDT | Other time zones
29 October @ 9am – 12pm AEST |10am – 1pm AEDT | Other time zones

Please register your expression of interest for the workshop and further details will be provided including payment details, pre-work and follow up review information. The cost of the workshop will be $150 for members and $300 for non-members*. The non-member fee includes a 12 month membership in ASCILITE.

If you work at a university that has an unlimited ASCILITE membership (La Trobe University, Australian Catholic University, University of Wollongong, University of Melbourne or Central Queensland University) and you are not yet a member of ASCILITE, please join for free since the cost is covered by your institution. Once you’ve done that, you may select the $150 workshop fee category when you register for the certification workshop.

Business Education SIG webinar: Students as Partners

Date and time: 6 September @ 5:00 pm -6:30 pm AEST

Students as Partners is being embraced as a teaching and learning principle across the world. But what exactly is Students as Partners (SaP) and how can we use it to improve and support student learning in Business?

Join Dr Amanda White (University of Technology Sydney) and Danielle Logan (Griffith University) as we learn about how to embark on a Students as Partners journey.

We have a fantastic panel of experts to help us understand the what, why and how:

Dr Leah Coutts (Griffith University)
Dr Mollie Dollinger (Deakin University)
Madelaine Marie-Judd (University of Queensland)
Dr Fiona O’Riordan (Dublin City University)

Join this webinar at https://au.bbcollab.com/guest/f0e9db10ad6445c4a11a3b5e3fe74112

ASCILITE Live! Webinar: Online Placements and Projects

Date and time: 13 September @ 11:00 am – 12:00 pm AEST | Singapore/HK 9am | Auckland 1pm | Other time zones

COVID restrictions forced many universities to rapidly venture into online Work Integrated Learning (WIL) at an unprecedented scale. In most cases, online placements and projects have been added to the broader repertoire of WIL experiences for good. In this interactive webinar, Assoc Professor Harsh Suri and Ms Friederika Kaider from Deakin University will facilitate a discussion on the benefits and challenges associated with online placement and projects. They will also share insights from the Australian Collaborative Education Network (ACEN) funded project they co-led with partners from RMIT and the University of Tasmania. ASCILITE is pleased to co-sponsor this event with ACEN.

Join the session in the ASCILITE webinar room.

Open Educational Practice SIG meeting

The regular online meeting of the OEP-SIG will take place on 7 September from 3pm – 4pm. New members are welcome. Find-out more about the aims of the EOP-SIG on the ASCILITE website here and on the SIG’s activities go to the SIG website here.

New TELall Blog Posts

Driving through a bumpy road: Course redesign for online delivery during COVID-19

In this post, Ishaq Al-Naabi (Language Lecturer, University of Technology and Applied Sciences, Oman) discusses the urgent need to professionally equip faculty with the needed skills to plan, design and evaluate online courses during the pandemic and post-pandemic. For future emergencies, institutions should plan their courses in a way that allows the shift to online delivery in a rapid and stress-free condition.

To use live clients or not to use live clients? Insights from educators, students and live clients on the benefits and disadvantage

In this post, Audrea Warner (Graduate School of Management, University of Auckland) discusses that over the past 30 years there has been an increasing interest in using real (live) clients in marketing courses (Bove and Davies, 2009). As educators we are constantly trying to find the balance between the importance placed on theory and its practical application. The challenge we face today is preparing our postgraduate students to not only have content knowledge, but simultaneously be able to work in teams and solve real life problems. According to Stern & Tseng (2002) as marketing is an applied discipline it is through practice that they will become more proficient.

Webinar recording: Virtual learning experiences utilizing digital technologies,

This Massey University team received an ASCILITE Innovation Award in 2020 and this recording highlights the team’s innovation which resulted in the development of three applications that enabled virtual experiences: Virtual microscopy that delivers an interactive microscope experience, enabling full slide viewing and zooming of interactive magnification views of stained glass slides on any device. Integrated virtual microscope slide images linked to E-publication of the research project, enabling readers of the publication to view and interact with an on-line microscope image referenced in the paper discussion. Virtual experiments for student physiology labs performed on living tissues, delivering interactive data recordings of physiological parameters integrated into on-line lessons examining isolated smooth muscle tissue, cardiac function, and uterine function. Following implementation, survey results revealed that the majority of students found the virtual lessons favorable and beneficial to their learning.

You may view the recording from the ASCILITE website here.

If you are interested in any of the other recordings conducted thus far in 2021, you will find those here.

Final Reminder: 2021 Members Survey

The ASCILITE Membership Survey closes on 1 September 2021, so if you haven’t completed it, we would be most grateful if you could do so now. The survey was emailed to everyone’s inbox on Tuesday 3 August 2021. This is your opportunity to provide feedback regarding ASCILITE’s services, initiatives and related activities and to inform the Society’s strategic and operational plans for the years ahead.

If you have not received your copy of the survey, please check your junk mail folders, as the survey email may have been diverted by your institution’s spam filter.

Reminder: ASCILITE 2021 Conference registration is open

This is a reminder that registrations are open for the ASCILITE Conference to be held on 29 November – 1 December 2021 at the University of New England in Armidale, NSW. In the event of lockdowns, UNE will endeavor to retain a hybrid conference with a mixture of face-to-face and virtual. However, if attendees are unable to attend in person, their registration will be converted to virtual attendance and a refund of the difference will be provided.

For further information and to register, visit the conference website. If you have any questions about registration fees and bookings, please email the conference organisers at ascilite2021@une.edu.au