ASCILITE NEWS

Call for Nominations to the Executive Committee

NOMINATIONS CLOSE TOMORROW
17 SEPTEMBER 2024 11PM AEST

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

We particularly seek nominations from candidates who are Professional staff.

The positions being elected this year are Treasurer and 4 members of the executive.

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. Committee members will be happy to answer your questions by phone or email.

Voting will be open to all financial members from 18 September to 4 October 2024.

Members will be sent candidate information with an online voting link on 18 September and the results of this ballot will be announced at the ASCILITE Annual General Meeting at ASCILITE 2024.

You will find further details of the election schedule, positions available and nomination forms (see section “How to Nominate”) on the ASCILITE website here.

2024 ASCILITE Awards: Open for Nominations

Nominations close 4 October 2024

Each year, ASCILITE members are invited to apply or nominate for the ASCILITE awards and to consider nominations that they believe meet the criteria set for each award. The award categories available to members in 2023 are as follows:

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. It is something original that “breaks into” teaching and learning in the tertiary sector.
  - The most outstanding Innovation Award: “The Allan Christie ASCILITE Innovation Award” (judged from Innovation Award nominations). Allan Christie was involved with ASCILITE since its conception in 1985. He was recognised with a Life Member award in 2003 (only the fourth person to receive this honour at the time). Allan continued to serve the Society for over 36 years and was on the ASCILITE Executive for 27 years when he retired from the Executive in December 2019. Allan was well known in higher education and sadly passed away suddenly last year. He is missed greatly in the ASCILITE circles.
Anthology Educational Designer of the Year Award, in memory of Allan Christie
- In recognition of Allan Christie’s lifelong contribution to the sector, this award is professional staff member who has made significant contributions to learning and teaching. The award is sponsored by Anthology, to the value of $1,000
Emerging Scholar Award
- Has made a noteworthy contribution in the exemplary use of ore research into technologies for learning and teaching in tertiary education
Community Fellow Award
- Recognise the outstanding contributions of individual ASCILITE members in the exemplary building of connections in the wider community and into the ASCILITE community.
ASCILITE/CAULLT Award for Outstanding Leadership in Digital Learning in Higher Education
- Recognises evidence of an individual’s innovative and effective leadership in the broad use of digital technologies to enhance teaching, learning, and overall performance in higher education.
ASCILITE Research Grants (NOTE: NEW FUNDING from 2025)
- Three ASCILITE research grants valued at $5,000 each – totalling $15,000, will be offered as follows – one Early Career Researcher, one General Academic and one Professional Staff Member. All investigators must be members of ASCILITE. These ASCILITE Research Grants will be offered for an 18-month period.
Student Bursary Award
- Available to full-time PhD/EdD or equivalent students
Life Member Award
- A prestigious award that recognizes the significant service and/or sustained contribution of an ASCILITE member to the Society

For further information on each award, refer to the specific award criteria and nomination form on the ASCILITE website.

LD-SIG Webinar: Making Work Integrated Learning work: for us, for students and for the curriculum

Date: Friday 20 September 2024
Time: 12:00 -1:00 pm AEDT
Register here

Work Integrated Learning (WIL) continues to be an area of growth within Australian higher education. Navigating the complexity, availability and accessibility of relevant WIL activities and ensuring these are well-integrated and aligned to the curriculum outcomes is also an ongoing challenge and one that Learning Designers can potentially support. In this panel webinar, we hear from several educators and experts in relation to implementing Work Integrated Learning and related activities (e.g. internships, placement, field trips, simulated work experiences and experiential learning) and what this means in practice, as well as what educators, Learning Designers and institutions can do to better coordinate holistic, quality WIL within tertiary or higher education settings.

Panel members:

Dr Jason Brown, Academic Program Director, Experiential Learning, University of Melbourne
Heather Pate, Senior Learning Designer (Edith Cowan University) and ACEN National Board Director
Rachael Baron Lecturer of Industry Placement, La Trobe University.

ASCILITE Live! Webinar (in collaboration with Turnitin): Promoting authentic learning experiences: redesigning assessments to minimise student misconduct

Date: Wednesday 9 October 2024
Time: 4.00 – 5.15pm AEDT
Register here

Join us as we bring together education leaders, researchers, and assessment experts to explore how to transform assessment with authentic learning experiences that boost student outcomes and mitigate academic misconduct.

Presenters:

Dr Dianne Stratton-Maher, Lecturer, School of Nursing and Midwifery, University of Southern Queensland
Dr Joon Nak Choi, Adjunct Associate Professor, Department of Management, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Dr Benito Cao, Associate Professor, School of Social Sciences, The University of Adelaide

Key Takeaways:

Explore authentic assessment design with methodologies such as project-based assessments, case studies and simulations that can reduce students’ incentive to cheat.
Harness formative feedback and self-assessment including continuous assessment methods, peer review and reflective exercises to foster student engagement, metacognitive skills and ownership of learning.
Adopt assessment security measures and misconduct deterrents such as randomised question banks, timed assessments and proctoring technologies that preserve integrity in the assessment process.

TELedvisors webinar: Changes – what happens when an institution changes the LMS?

Date: Wednesday 26 September 2024
Time: 12:00 – 1:00pm AEST
More information and registration here.
The Learning Management System (LMS) occupies a central place in learning and teaching in today’s tertiary education institutions. The decision to change LMS (or make a dramatic change to it) triggers a cascade of activities across many areas of an institution – and more often than not, a flood of tears (sadness and joy) from the people who will be affected by this change.

For all this impact, there is a remarkable dearth of information about how these decisions are made, how the changes are managed and what goes right and wrong in these processes.

In this month’s TELedvisors Network webinar panel discussion, hear from the people who have been there, behind the scenes, to learn what is involved in change of this magnitude.

Presenters

Michael Sankey – Professor and Director, Learning Futures and Lead Education Architect, Charles Darwin University
Kate Mitchell – Senior Learning Designer (ePortfolio), University of Melbourne
Trev Wood – Manager Education Platforms – Education Technologies, Monash University (TBC)

TA-SIG webinar: How to ensure robust assessment in the light of Generative AI developments

Date: Wednesday 2 October 2024
Time: 5:00 – 6:00pm AEST
More information and registration hereHave you been wondering how robust your assessments are against AI? This session will report on large scale research carried out by The Open University, funded by NCFE, between March and July 2024. The research looked to identify the most and least robust assessment types to be answered by Generative AI (GAI), enable some comparison across subject disciplines and levels, and to assess the effectiveness of a short training programme to upskill educators in recognising scripts containing AI-generated material. A mixed-methods approach involving quantitative and qualitative data considered the results of marking from 944 answers (representing 59 questions from 17 different assessment types, 17 disciplines and 4 FHEQ levels).

The research team will share the results including the performance of GAI across a range of different assessments and the impact of training on markers. They will suggest how assessment can be made more robust in light of GAI developments and recommend how higher education institutions might adopt AI-informed approaches to learning, teaching and assessment.

Questions and interaction are welcome.

Presented by: Liz Hardie and Kieran McCartney (Open University, UK)

ASCILITE Spring into Excellence Research School

You are invited to join us at the 2024 ASCILITE research school. Applications close 4 October.

The next School is planned for 28-30 October and will be hosted by UTS in Sydney.

Aims of the Research School
The aim of the ASCILITE Spring into Excellence Research School is to:

Provide support and guidance to participants in developing and progressing Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) research initiatives including but not limited to:
– Formulating a relevant and effective TEL research project.
– Collecting appropriate TEL research data.
– Identifying what data is most appropriate for TEL research.
Assist participants to identify and plan a contemporary TEL research project.
Enable opportunities for participants to link with like-minded collaborators from other universities and potentially to establish viable cross-institutional research collaborations.
Guide participants in developing a grant application or research plan for a TEL research project. This would include both projects that have already been conceptualised as well as new projects that have not yet been conceived.

You can access the expression of interest form here and/or get more information about the Research School here.

ASCILITE & AECT Affiliation Meet & Greet

Date: Wednesday 18 September 2024
Time: 9:00AM AEST
Join in here

We are excited to announce the Meet and Greet with our US affiliates the Association for Educational Communications & Technology (AECT). It’s free to join and will be a great way to learn about the event and activities offered by AECT After an initial general session there will be the opportunity to break into breakout rooms for a chance to chat about common interests.

We are hoping for a strong turn out of ASCILITE members!

OTHER NEWS

2024 Open Education Conference

The 2024 Open Education Conference will be held as a hybrid event on October 8-10 in USA (Providence, RI) and online.

The theme “It’s About Time” highlights this critical moment in education as we strive for a more open future. Don’t miss out on the latest research, best practices, and innovations from across the open education field.

Register for an in-person or virtual ticket. To support equitable access to the conference, students receive a heavily discounted rate and scholarships are available to all by Application.

Why should you attend?

Keynotes by James Glapa-Grossklag, Joy Shoemate, Richard Baraniuk, and a student panel
200+ sessions
Social activities and networking (in person and online!)
Post-conference access to all recordings

We hope to see you at #OpenEd24. It’s About Time!

Participants needed: Academic Faculty attitudes towards Deepfake technology in Higher Education

Jasper Roe and Mike Perkins at James Cook University Singapore and British University Vietnam, are running a survey on Academic Faculty attitudes towards Deepfake technology in Higher Education. They are seeking staff involved in teaching, research, or management in higher education, to spare 10 minutes to complete their survey. They are looking to develop insight into a new and evolving AI technology which may become common in education in the future. This survey has been assessed by James Cook University’s ethical review board and granted a human research ethics exemption.

The link to access the survey and associated information is here