ASCILITE NEWS

ASCILITE Member Survey Highlights

The ASCIILTE Executive would like to thank the 261 members who took the time out to respond to our 2021 Member Survey. Your feedback is valuable in helping to inform the future directions of the society. An executive sub-committee is now working on a more complete analysis and report of the results. In the meantime, here is an infographic of some of the preliminary findings which are also listed below:

Members

70% have been members for less than 3 years
56.8% are academic, 39% professional staff
49% 16+ years in career

Top 3 Reasons For Joining

Institution paid for membership
Potential to enhance professional capabilities and development
Aligns to work role/responsibilities

Activities/Services

The ASCILITE Conference (n=154), website (n=133), email bulletin (n=125), and webinars (n=121) were service that most members accessed.
Grants and Awards (n=17), Facebook (n=17), and Spring into Excellence Research School (n=14) were the least accessed.
Of the member services/activities, time and lack of awareness of services were most cited for not engaging with services/activities.
The ASCILITE Conference remains a positive activity with the majority of conference dimensions rated as agree and strongly agree.
AJET is regarded as a valuable source of high-quality research in educational technology and tertiary education (n=181).

Member Satisfaction

Member satisfaction with the organisation is positive with the majority of respondents agreeing or strongly agreeing that they are happy with their ASCILITE membership (n=210) and that the society provides value for money (n=156).
Members likely to encourage their colleagues to join ASCILITE (n=177).

Areas of Improvement

Establish strategies to on-board new members.
Increase visibility and connection to the executive.

Update on the TELAS Information Sessions & Reviewer Certification

TELAS (Technology Enhanced Learning Accreditation Standards), which has been under development by ASCILITE for several years, is now entering the operational phase through a series of online information sessions and the first Certified Reviewer workshop. 31 participants attended the first two hour information session on 2 September and a further 43 registrations have been received for the second session scheduled for 29 September. Registration has closed for this session, however, in response to the high level of interest, a third session has now been added for 18 November from 2pm – 4pm AEST and registration is open for that session.

In addition to the information sessions, a TELAS Reviewer Certification workshop will take place over two half days on 28 and 29 October. The registration fee for the online workshop has been set at $150 in line with ASCILITE’s policy to have TELAS operate on a cost recovery basis.

You can find out more about the Information Sessions and the reviewer workshop on the TELAS website here.

Reminder: Invitation to vote in the 2021 ASCILITE Executive Committee Elections

Current ASCILITE members were emailed on 22 September with a private invitation to vote in the 2021 ASCILITE Executive Committee elections. If you haven’t already done so, please check your inbox for the email with the subject Invitation to Vote in the 2021 ASCILITE Executive Committee Elections sent to you from SurveyMonkey on that date. Please note that the voting link embedded in each email is unique to each recipient.

We hope that all current members can take a few minutes to participate in the poll, so please locate your email and cast your vote by the due date. If you are unable to locate the email, please let the Returning Officer know by 30 September and we will email you a new invitation.

The Call for Nominations to the committee closed on 21 September. Voting opened on the 22 September and will close on 8 October 2021 with results being announced at the ASCILITE Annual General Meeting.

As per the ASCILITE constitution, the Call for Nominations this year was for the President, Vice-President and 3 non-office bearer committee members.

Only one nomination was received for each of the positions of President and Vice-President while multiple nominations were received for the three available non-office bearer positions on the committee. You will find details of these nominees in the email invitation you received with full profiles of each nominee contained in the poll.

Election of the ASCILITE President and Vice-President

As just mentioned, only one nomination was received for each of the positions of President and Vice-President by the due date and as a result, these two nominees will be elected unopposed.

The nomination for President came from Dr Chris Campbell who has served on the Executive Committee as President since 2019 and the nomination for Vice-President came from A/Prof Michael Cowling who was co-opted to the Executive Committee in 2019 and then elected to serve a two year term in 2020. You can view Chris’s profile here and Michael’s profile may be viewed under the committee tab on the same page.

Congratulations to both Chris and Michael who are, without a doubt, keen to continue their work on the Executive and serving the ASCILITE community.

TELedvisors SIG webinar: Visual approaches to learning design and curriculum mapping at different scales

Date and time: 30 September @ 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm AEST

This session is a joint presentation of the ASCILITE Learning Design SIG and TELedvisors SIG. It is also part of a TELedvisor series on working across teams, and looks at some of the tools that teams use for planning and sharing curriculum designs and learning designs.

Presenters

Up first are Drs Dewa Wardak and Andrew Cram are Lecturers in Educational Development with the Business Co-Design team and have recently been discussing and sharing visual approaches with their group in the University of Sydney Business School. They will show us some of their work in different projects. Spoiler alert: unlike the QA process for unit development, “design approaches tend to be customised to each unit”, they say.

Dewa and Andrew will be followed by Michelle Riggs who is new to learning design and to the Australian Institute of Business, Adelaide, where she is an educational designer. She’s also new to research. When she took on the design of a new unit in the research program, she wanted to get a clearer picture of the unit’s place in the research candidate’s journey. She’s adapted her team’s approach to unit and module design to explore visual representations at a program level, using a simple online planning tool.

Our final presenter will be Mitchell Osmond who is an experienced trainer of teaching and learning, with over 10 years spent coaching and facilitating workplace learning in the higher education sector. As the Teaching & Learning Manager in the UTS Business School, he is primarily focused on driving innovation within curriculum, subjects and assessments. His team in the Business School use a range of visualisations in the process of assuring student learning, from mapping the scaffolding of learning outcomes across the curriculum, to visualising student outcome data for continuous improvement processes.

We’ll see how each workplace shares their designs across their teams then open the floor for questions and comments.

The session will be conducted in the TELedvisors SIG Blackboard Collaborate room here.

ASCILITE & EduGrowth Sign MoU

ASCILITE is pleased to announce that it has entered into an MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) with EduGrowth Australia. EduGrowth is an Australian education technology and innovation industry hub. Through connection and collaboration, it aims to accelerate Australia’s EdTech ecosystem globally and connect a community of education providers, industry participants and EdTech entrepreneurs committed to reimagining learning in the digital age.

The MoU provides a framework for areas of joint working between ASCILITE and EduGrowth. It sets out how the two organisations will work together to ensure that shared objectives are taken forward and provides a platform on which to build joint working.

A copy of the MoU is available on the ASCILITE website here.

ASCILITE now has MoUs with EDEN, ALT (UK), SoLAR, D2L, FLANZ and now Edugrowth. Copies of these MoUs are also available on the ASCILITE website.

Reminder: 2021 ASCILITE Awards Open for Nominations

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 four award categories available to members in 2021 are as follows:

Innovation Award
Emerging Scholar Award
Community Fellow Award
Life Member Award

Innovation Award

The ASCILITE Innovation Award, first introduced in 2011, 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. Applications for this award are likely to include:

Innovative solutions which promote the exemplary and research informed use of technologies for teaching and learning in tertiary education.
Product development projects which promote the exemplary and research informed use of technologies for teaching and learning in tertiary education.
Large-scale implementation initiatives which promote the innovative, exemplary and research informed use of technologies for teaching and learning in tertiary education.
Major professional development initiatives which promotes the exemplary and research informed use of technologies for teaching and learning in tertiary education.

Emerging Scholar Award

Nominations for the ASCILITE Emerging Scholar Award will be assessed on merit by a sub-committee of the ASCILITE Executive. The following criteria guides the assessment of this award:

Has made a noteworthy contribution in the exemplary use of technologies for learning and teaching in tertiary education in one of the categories referred to in the award criteria document; and/or
Has made a noteworthy contribution to exemplary research into technologies for learning and teaching in tertiary education in one of the referred to in the award criteria document; and
Through their contributions has promoted the strategic vision, mission and goals of ASCILITE.

Community Fellow Award

The ASCILITE Community Fellow Award aims to recognise the outstanding contributions of individual ASCILITE members in the exemplary building of connections in the wider community and into the ASCILITE community. The nature of these contributions should cover one or more of the following categories:

Works within the community to develop professional leadership in the development, application or implementation of exemplary technology-related projects for teaching and learning in tertiary education.
Encourages and supports the exemplary use of technologies for teaching and learning in tertiary education within the community.
Encourages innovations in practice in the exemplary use of technologies for teaching and learning in tertiary education.
Participates and initiates discussion in the use of technologies for teaching and learning in tertiary education in the wider community.

Life Member Award

An ASCILITE Life Member Award is a prestigious award that recognizes the significant service and/or sustained contribution of an ASCILITE member to the Society. Life Member Awards are the highest recognition of achievement made by ASCILITE. This award is made only when an appropriate candidate meets the criteria. This means that the award may not be presented every year.

Further Information

For further information on each award, refer to the specific award criteria and nomination form on the ASCILITE website. The closing date for nominations is 18 October 2021.

Reminder: Call for Applications in the 2021 – 2022 D2L / ASCILITE Research Grants closes soon!

This is a reminder that the D2L / ASCILITE the call for 2021 – 2022 Research/Scholarship grant applications is open but closes on 30 September 2021. The grants, which are only available to ASCILITE members, provide for a maximum funding of $5,000 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).

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

Business Education SIG webinar: Leveraging technology to teach large cohorts: Comparing high and low resource investment

Date and time: 19 October @ 3:00 pm – 4:00 pm AEDT Free

Elaine Huber leads the University of Sydney Business School Co-Design Unit (BCD). Her 30-member team includes educational developers, digital learning designers and technologists, media producers, student interns and educational evaluators. BCD collaborates with large cohort unit coordinators to redesign the delivery of their units. Elaine will discuss their journey which is supported by large strategic project funding (Connected Learning at Scale) and provide examples of innovations based on the following three guiding principles:

Connecting with discipline knowledge
Connecting with Peers through active and collaborative activities
Connecting with society through authentic assessment

While Brent Gregory was responsible for introductory Accounting Units at the University of New England, he structured those units to facilitate scalable personalisation. Brent had no budget and so took a more basic approach targeted more at the low hanging fruit.

This presentation will display a continuum from state of the art to low cost and provides a framework and examples for you to consider your approach to a more effective delivery of large cohort units.

You can join this session in the BE-SIG’s Blackboard Collaborate room here.

ASCILITE Spring into Excellence Research School – rescheduled to 2022

The ASCILITE Spring into Excellence Research School has been postponed for 2021 due to travel restrictions. However we are planning an exciting reboot in mid May 2022. We hope to come together in person, but if not, we are putting in place a contingency for moving the school online.

The ASCILITE Spring into Excellence Research School is typically held over three (3) days in which academic and professional staff come together to further develop their research skills. The school is facilitated by senior researchers and leaders drawn from the ASCILITE community.

If you are interested in enrolling in the event please complete this EOI form so that we may keep your details on file and alert you to further developments as details become clearer in the new year.

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

OTHER NEWS

CRADLE Seminar Series and expert panel discussion on Open Textbooks in Australia: updated, localised, inclusive

Please join us for an expert panel session to discuss the Open Textbooks as Social Justice National Scoping study, chaired by Deakin University’s Prof. Helen Partridge, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Teaching and Learning). The study investigates if open textbooks can be helpful to social justice initiatives in Australia, as they have been overseas.

Dr Sarah Lambert, Honorary Research Fellow, Deakin University, will lead a presentation of the summary key findings from this research, followed by a panel discussion of its opportunities and implications. Joining Sarah on the panel, is Ms Fiona Salisbury, Executive Director Library and University Librarian, La Trobe University; Prof. Kevin Ashford-Rowe, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Digital Learning), Queensland University of Technology; and Dr Johanna Funk, lecturer in cultural knowledges, Charles Darwin University, with Chair Prof Helen Partridge.

You may register for this session here.

CRADLE Symposium 2021

This year the CRADLE Symposium brings together researchers in the fields of higher education assessment, inclusion and social justice, to share ideas, research and practice, and problematise the concept of inclusive assessment. The symposium aims to take stock of what has already been achieved (both practical and conceptual), identify areas of synergy for collaboration, and develop a research agenda that serves to improve the equity of assessment in higher education.

We are delighted to host Dr Jan McArthur on Thursday 21 October at 5pm AEDT and Prof. Penny Jane Burke, Monday 25 October at 10.30am AEDT. Our two keynote speakers will share their perspectives and spark conversations.

To conclude the symposium, we are excited to convene a panel discussion with researchers Prof. Sarah O’Shea, Dr Jessamy Gleeson, Dr Ben Whitburn and Prof. Phill Dawson on Tuesday 26 October at 4pm AEDT.

You can register for the symposium here.

Australian Academic Integrity Network Forum 2021

Are you committed to promoting academic integrity and fostering your students’ academic integrity throughout their studies?

We invite you to join us for the inaugural Australian Academic Integrity Network Forum 2021 – a platform to foster collaboration, share knowledge and hear from leaders in the field of academic integrity. This year’s Forum is hosted by Torrens University Australia, Think Education and the Media Design School.

The event will be fully virtual, meaning you will be able to join from anywhere. Here are the details:

Event date: Tuesday 19 October 2021
Time: 11:00 am – 5:30pm (AEDT)
Registration: You may register here.

Please share this with your networks and encourage them to register as well. The forum is open to staff in all public and private higher education institutions in Australia and New Zealand. The inaugural forum is being offered free-of-charge to all participants.

You may also watch in the coming weeks as we share news of the program and speakers. Visit the #AAIN2021 website here for further information.

Warmest regards,

Dr. Kristina Nicholls (Torrens University Australia)
Prof Bernie Marshall (Deakin University)
AAIN Forum Co-chairs

Impact of schooling at home on parents and children during the COVID-19 pandemic

The closure of educational institutions due to COVID-19 has impacted more than 94% of the world’s population, and it is critical that we understand the impact of schooling from home on parents and children in Australia.

All parents who are schooling (or have schooled) their children from home are invited to complete a 5 – 10 minute online survey regarding their perceptions and experiences. The survey is entirely anonymous and participants can go into a prize draw for a chance to win a 14” HP 2-in-1 Touchscreen laptop for your child or one of ten $50 Amazon Gift cards. You can also opt to receive a copy of the survey results, and Parents & Citizen Associations of schools that contribute more than 25 responses will receive an anonymised summary of results for their specific school.

Further details about the study are provided on the first page of the survey: https://mquni.au1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3q1UX3NTcPdfTYW

We would be grateful if you would distribute this to any parents who are schooling (or have schooled) their children from home.

Thank you for your consideration and best wishes,

Professor Matt Bower
School of Education
Macquarie University