ASCILITE NEWS
ASCILITE Live! Webinar: Weathering the Storm: Higher Education, Crisis, and Technology Enhanced Learning
Date and Time: 25 March, 12pm AEDT. You will find start times for other time zones here.
Abstract: Technology-enhanced learning as an approach to institutional crises like COVID-19 is not a new approach. Hurricane Katrina, the Christchurch earthquakes, SARS, and the H1N1 (swine flu) similarly disrupted tertiary education and challenged institutions to develop business continuity strategies. In this special session, our international panel discusses the challenges posed by pandemics and natural disasters, how they addressed the challenge and the lessons learnt.
Panelists:
- Dr Nicola Dabner, Senior Lecturer, College of Education, Health & Human Development, University of Canterbury, New Zealand
- Dr Goh Moh Heng, President of BCM Institute and Managing Director of GMH Continuity Architects, Singapore
- Dr Susan McCahan, Vice-Provost Academic Programs and Vice-Provost, Innovation in Undergraduate Education, University of Toronto, Canada
Registration: You can register for this webinar here. Pre-registration allows us to email you a quick reminder prior to the session.
Share this link with colleagues: https://ascilite.org/get-involved/ascilite-live-webinars/weathering-the-storm-higher-education-crisis-and-technology-enhanced-learning/
New Issue of AJET Vol. 36 No. 1 (2020) Published
The AJET Lead Editors and their Associate Editors invite you to read a new issue of AJET that is now available on the journal website here: https://ajet.org.au/index.php/AJET/issue/current
ASCILITE2020 Conference Poll
Due to mounting concerns about COVID-19, ASCILITE is drawing-up contingency plans for the 2020 conference, currently scheduled for 30 Nov – 2 Dec 2020. While no plans have been made to cancel the conference, ASCILITE and the 2020 Conference Organizing Committee would be remiss not to develop alternatives should it become necessary to hold it in a different format. As part of this planning process over the coming weeks, we would very much like to know the views of members.
The poll only has two questions and you will find them here.
TELedvisors SIG webinar: Raising ABLE: Scaling Learning Design with a Design System
Learn how we systematized good learning design across a complex education ecosystem to deliver quality learning experiences to our learners.
Key Learning Points:
- Identify issues in scaling learning design
- Leverage key characteristics and benefits of design systems
- Maintain a learning design system.
Presenter: Joyce Seitsinger is Learning Design Director at RMIT Online, the online education arm of RMIT University. She is an advocate for learning experience design at scale as a tool for driving digital transformation in education. With more than 20 years experience in designing blended and online learning experiences, she’s been part of the online education industry as it has matured. She’s seen what works, she’s seen what doesn’t work, and she’s seen the same mistakes made over and over again when learning design doesn’t happen in a multi-disciplinary team that combines subject matter expertise with digital pedagogy, design and production expertise.
Date and Time: Thursday 26 March, 12 noon AEDT
You can login to this session here.
Transforming Assessment (e-Assessment) SIG special announcement – Teaching in the time of COVID19 – webinar double bill
Implementing remotely invigilated online exams at scale.
Date: 25 March 2020
Presenter: Kylie Day, University of New England.
This session explores key lessons and successes of the University of New England’s experience in implementing large scale remotely invigilated (proctored) online exams where students use their own computer to do an exam in their own space under supervised conditions. This can be used for both higher stakes exams in a live proctored mode and lower stakes testing using automatic monitoring. UNE now has more than 60% of examinable units offering the exams online, and 25% of all exam sittings are undertaken by students this way. This is expected to grow substantially this trimester.
Further information and free registration go here.
The KISS approach to teaching online in the time of COVID19.
Date: 26 March 2020
Presenter: Michael Sankey, Griffith University.
This session explores a “keep it simple” approach to moving teaching online in a time of crisis. This includes ideas for how to load it, teach it and assess it whilst keeping in mind the limitations faced by those rapidly moving online but also aiming to maximize student engagement in learning.
Further information and free registration go here.
Other Transforming Assessment (e-Assessment) SIG News
Webinar: Personalised Tasks and Anonymous Peer Grading
Date: 1 April 2020
Presenter: Mathias Magdowski (Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg, Germany)
Ideally we should be able to provide a personalised task for every student in an engineering exercise or seminar. This would reduce the risk of copying and plagiarism, but is the effort too high for the lecturer? This session explores how digital tools can help to solve these problems and how students can effectively assess each other’s work. Each student receives their own assignment by email, is able to work through it it without time pressure and then submit it via our learning management system Moodle for assessment. In order to reduce marking load of teachers, the students then assess each other using a sample solution, which is also personalised. The assessment process is automated and therefore easily scalable. In contrast to simple multiple choice or numerical response questions, the calculation method and approach can also be evaluated.
Further information and registration go here.
Previous session recording: Online Knowledge Maps for assessment and feedback held 4 March
Concept and knowledge maps have the potential to improve student learning and understanding by promoting meaningful learning and critical thinking. However, providing manual feedback on students’ maps is not feasible for large classes. knowledge maps is a web-based platform developed at UNSW Faculty of Medicine. The tool has also been integrated with Moodle. The platform can be used to create, edit and share maps, as well as providing automate feedback on students’ inputs. This webinar described the affordances of Knowledge Maps and explored the evidence of its effectiveness as a student assessment tool.
To obtain session resources and view the recording go here.
Other upcoming e-assessment related events:
- The “eAssessment Awards” will be announced 22 April, London UK. See details here.
- A post-awards webinar is scheduled for 3 June featuring presentations from three award winners. See details here.
- The “E-Assessment in Mathematical Sciences” conferences goes online for 2020 between 22 June – 1 July, hosted by Newcastle University, UK. See details here.
- The “International Assessment in Higher Education” conference on 2nd July in Manchester UK. See details here.
- Post-conference panel review webinar is schedule for 15 July, see webinar details here.
OTHER NEWS
Virtual WIL: Technology enabled WIL Placements and Projects Research & Survey
A research team from Deakin University, RMIT University and the University of Tasmania is conducting an Australian Collaborative Education Network (ACEN)-funded research into the practice of virtual (online) WIL. This Virtual WIL project aims at producing a conceptual framework and practical guidelines for developing online WIL placements and projects.
It will address the needs of all students but take into particular consideration the needs of international students and those from equity groups, with the purpose of increasing student access to WIL. It is particularly pertinent at this time of COVID19 when many universities are seeking to provide additional online options for students.
If you are a WIL practitioner and offer virtual WIL placements or projects we would very much appreciate it if you could fill out the following survey (estimated to take between 12 – 20 minutes). We would also be obliged if you could pass it onto colleagues as appropriate.
Here is the link to the virtual WIL survey: https://researchsurveys.deakin.edu.au/jfe/form/SV_9XgEtUmaf9hZ0O1
A shorter version is available here: https://bit.ly/2TxbnBj
Please feel free to contact any member of our project team if you have any questions or comments.
Kind regards,
Friederika on behalf of the research team (Assoc Prof Harsh Suri, Ms Friederika Kaider, Dr Wayne Read (Deakin), Ms Leoni Russell (RMIT), Assoc Prof Annette Marlow UTas).
European Distance & eLearning Network (EDEN) Open Education Week webinar recordings
Open Education week (2 – 6 March) was a celebration of the global Open Education Movement whose goal was to raise awareness for the movement and its impact on teaching and learning worldwide. As part of the celebration, EDEN organised a series of online events. Six EDEN webinars took place with 1086 registered participants, coming from 50 countries including 22 from outside Europe, including the USA, China, Brazil and India.
The recordings of these webinars can be viewed here and presenters’ slides can be viewed on the EDEN SlideShare page.
