ASCILITE NEWS
ASCILITE 2017 Conference News
If you haven’t already registered for this year’s ASCILITE conference, here are some of the great reasons to register now!
Draft Conference Program Released: The draft conference program is now available on the conference website. You’ll find it here.
Early Bird Extended: The Early Bird rate has now been extended to 30 October so there’s still time to register
Exciting Keynote Speakers: Yet another great reason to attend this year’s ASCILITE conference is the exciting line-up of keynote speakers:
- Professor James Arvanitakis: From blended learning to analytics: Why we keep getting IT wrong? Within the educational setting, the promises of technology rarely live up to what is delivered. Be it a lack of commitment, tools that fail to deliver the flexibility desired, faculty resistance or failure to commit resources, students frequently feel let down and educators are often frustrated. While most of us aim to ensure that the pedagogy trumps technology, it is more likely to that the pedagogy is shaped by the technology we can utilize. In this presentation, I will draw on a cross cultural project involving Australian and Indian universities to outline how we can better deliver the programs we promise with the technology available, rather than being held hostage by it. Read more >>
- Marita Cheng: Robotics in the future of work Marita Cheng will take you through the robots of tomorrow and how AI will shape our future in ways greater than we can imagine today. From machines that can see for us, process data accurately and at a greater speed than humans, and robots that get the job done and don’t answer back. There is much to think about and prepare for as we create the future of work, but most importantly – what we can do to educate and equip our graduates for this future. Read more >>
- Amber Case: Internet of Things, technology and our future Our world is made of information that competes for our attention. How does it affect us as individuals? Does it help us learn or does it get in the way? What are the implications for the way we learn and teach in tertiary education? How does technology help us engage with community? The world is no longer dominated by desktop computers. We are mobile and more organic. We need an equivalent computing and design framework to ensure that technology fits into our lives and empowers us. We need to live alongside it instead of being controlled by it. To find some direction, we can look to concepts of Calm Technology. The terms calm computing and calm technology were coined in 1995 by PARC Researchers Mark Weiser and John Seely Brown in reaction to the increasing complexities that information technologies were creating. Calm technology describes a state of technological maturity where a user’s primary task is not computing, but being human. Read more >>
Toowoomba Culture
This year, the conference is being held at the University of Southern Queensland in Toowoomba. Toowoomba is an exciting, vibrant and multi-cultural city that is famed for its parks and gardens but increasingly for its gourmet restaurants, coffee shops and street art. Check out more about Toowoomba here. There’s a stunning social program to accompany the conference with champagne tasting, star gazing and a conference dinner to remember all on offer for conference delegates.
ASCILITE 2017 Post-Conference Workshops Announced
The 2017 Conference Committee is pleased to announce three exciting post conference workshops lined up to help you extend your ASCILITE 2017 experience! Full details are available on the conference blog here.
2017 ASCILITE Executive Committee Poll
All current ASCILITE members are invited to cast their vote in the 2017 ASCILITE Executive Committee poll that opened on 11 October 2017.
A Call for Nominations to the Executive Committee opened on 20 September and closed on 10 October and members were emailed on 11 October with a personal link to cast their vote for their preferred nominees.
If you have not yet voted and you were a current member at 11 October, please locate the email with the subject “2017 ASCILITE Executive Committee Poll” sent to you on that date and select the link to caste your vote. Voting closes on 31 October. Please note that links cannot be resent.
ASCILITE Executive Committee members perform critical volunteer roles that ensure ASCILITE remains a sustainable, vibrant and relevant tertiary education community. As an ASCILITE community member, we hope that you will cast your vote in order to ensure the continuing success of the peak professional body for digital learning and teaching in Australasia.
First ASCILITE SIG Survey is Open to SIG Members
If you are a member of any of the ASCILITE SIGs listed below, you are invited to complete the first ASCILITE SIG survey designed to help ASCILITE and SIG leaders better understand the needs of their respective members
- Learning Design
- Learning Analytics
- Transforming Assessment
- Mobile Learning
- TELedvisors
Members of the LD-SIG and LA-SIG were emailed on 9 October with a link to the survey while leaders of the TA-SIG, ML-SIG and TELe-SIG posted a link to the survey in their respective forums. If you are unable to locate the post, simply use the link below.
The survey has been vetted by the leaders of each ASCILITE SIG who are all keen to know what their respective members think.
The survey takes an average of 2 – 3 minutes to complete and is anonymous. If you are a member of more than one SIG, you may re-take the survey by selecting the specific SIG your are responding to each time.
You will find the survey here. The deadline for responses is 25 October 2017.
Once the results have been tabulated, ASCILITE will make them available to the SIGs and membership.
ASCILITE Live! Webinar: Building capacity for Open Educational Practices in Australian HE
Date & Time: 26 October 2017, 12pm AEDT and 11am AEST. You will find other time zones for the session here.
Abstract: Capacity building can be key to raise understanding, awareness and empower educators to make informed decisions about change and adoption of innovation learning technologies to enhance learning and teaching in higher education. This is also true for Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open Educational Practices (OEP). In fact, research conducted in Australia in 2011 showed that higher education stakeholders believed that capacity building was a way to eliminate barriers and increase OEP engagement.
This session will mainly focus on capacity building activities, tools, and research for OEP in Australian higher education. It will be interactive and reflective, so participants will have the opportunity to contribute to the discussion and put forward ideas on how institutions and educators can further engage with OEP.
Session Format
This webinar will be conducted in a Fika session format. The word ‘fika’ is a Swedish word that refers to a coffee break with family, friends or colleagues and implies chatting over a break. The ‘fika’ session will run for a maximum of 60 minutes (1 hour), with the speaker sharing for about 10 to 15 minutes and the remaining time devoted to discussion on the topic. Fika sessions rely more on the active participation of attendees than do other webinar presentation formats.
Resources
Bossu, C., & Fountain, W. (2015). Capacity-building in open education: an Australian approach. Open Praxis, 7(2). doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5944/openpraxis.7.2.197
Bossu, C. (2016). Open Educational Practices in Australia. In F. Miao, S. Mishra, & R. McGreal (Eds.), Open Educational Resources: Policy, Costs and Transformation (pp. 13 – 25). France & Canada: UNESCO and Commonwealth of Learning. http://oasis.col.org/handle/11599/2306
Bossu, C., Ward, L., Wills, S., Alexander, S., Sadler, D., Kandlbinder, Uys, P. (2016). A national strategy to promote Open Educational Practices in higher education in Australia. Paper presented at the 33rd International Conference on Innovation, Practice and Research in the Use of Educational Technologies in Tertiary Education (ASCILITE 2016): Show Me The Learning, Adelaide, SA. http://2016conference.ascilite.org/wp-content/uploads/ascilite2016_bossu_concise.pdf
Presenter
Dr Carina Bossu is a Lecturer, Learning and Teaching (OEP) with the Tasmanian Institute of Learning and Teaching at the University of Tasmania. Her current work and research are primarily focused on Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open Educational Practices (OEP) in higher education, more specifically issues related to learning, teaching and professional development. Carina was awarded an ASCILITE Fellow in 2016 for her national and international contribution to learning and teaching through OEP.
Registration
You can register for this session here.
Next TELedvisors SIG Webinar: “Reflective learning with ePortfolios.”
Date and Time: Thursday 2 November at 12 noon (AEDT)
Abstract: With the end of 2017 fast approaching, it’s a good time for reflection. At this last webinar of the year we will look at one of the highly valued (and yet contested) pedagogical approaches, ePortfolios for reflective learning. John Dewy once notably said that ‘we do not learn from experience… we learn from reflecting on experience.’ How do ePortfolios help reflective learning? What is an ePortfolio anyway? How can we make it happen? We will hear from ePortfolio experts and enthusiasts, who were also presenters at the ePortfolio forum this year – they all have a lot to say about this topic!
Presenters
- Kathryn Coleman (Uni of Melbourne)
- Emma Collins (Otago Polytech)
All are welcome to join us in the salubrious Collaborate Ultra room at http://bit.ly/TELedsinar
LD-SIG Webinar: Learning Design Research – Continuing the Discourse: Tomorrow!
Date & Time: 24 October 2017, 2pm AEDT and 1pm AEST. You will find other time zones for the session here.
Abstract: Learning Design is an evolving field of research and practice associated with many definitional variations and unique concepts. Nevertheless, among the Australian Learning Design community, there seems to exist a general agreement that Learning Design (LD) is primarily about the generation and study of design ideas, the efficacy of their capturing, sharing and reusability. What is missing is an agreement on a set of LD Methodologies, which can assist with some of the most challenging issues of LD research and practice. This webinar will explore the challenges of collaboration, distribution and reusability of learning designs. We argue that addressing these challenges may constitute a first step towards the future development of agreed LD methodologies.
Presenters
Associate Professor Eva Dobozy is the Deputy Dean, Learning and Teaching at the Curtin Business School, Curtin University, leading program and pedagogical innovations and the development of templatable learning designs for reuse in a variety of disciplines, which she refers to as ‘blue print designs’ or ‘transdisciplinary pedagogical templates (TPTs). She is currently the Vice-President of the Western Australian Institute of Educational Research, the Australian representative and executive member of the International Council for Educational Media (ICEM) and the recipient of the 2015 Outstanding Professional Service Award from the Professional Teaching Council of Western Australia. Furthermore, Associate Professor Dobozy is the co-founder and leader of the ASCILITE Learning Design SIG.
Associate Professor Panos Vlachopoulos is Associate Dean, Quality and Standards, Faculty of Arts at Macquarie University. Panos is an academic educator, with 15 years of international experience in the area of Higher Education Development. He has led large scale curriculum development projects in the UK, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Greece and Australia. He developed a learning design methodology for team-based curriculum design, a framework for reflection in professional learning and has taught for numerous years in areas of Technology-Enhanced Learning and Teaching. Panos is a member of numerous professional organisations (including Ascilite) and a reviewer for journals in technology-enhanced learning and higher education studies. His current research focuses on online learning design, social network analysis, reflective practice and digital professional skills.
Registration
You can register for this session here.
OTHER NEWS
Job Vacancy: Faculty Development Lead, University of Queensland
The Office of Medical Education in Brisbane, which is part of the Faculty of Medicine, University of Queensland has an opportunity for an innovative academic developer to join the team and lead the development of a program to build capacity and support staff teaching the Doctor of Medicine Program. The position is a continuing position at academic Level C or D and aims to design and develop an innovative well-targeted faculty development strategy that meets the needs of the widely dispersed UQ MD program across multiple sites and contexts.
Further information is available on the university website here. Applications close 10 November.
To discuss this role please contact Professor Nicholas Hawkins, Director, Office of Medical Education on +61 7 3346 4634 or email n.hawkins@uq.edu.au
