2020: ACODE Whitepapers

ACODE Whitepapers

• Survey of micro-credentialing practice in Australasian universities 2020

  Ratna Selvaratnam, Michael Sankey

  A rapidly evolving higher education landscape is an opportunity for Australasian universities to reconsider how it offers education. In a time where knowledge and skills need to be updated constantly, a three- or four-year degree may not suit the currency required in many jobs and other work. A student’s employability and entrepreneurship abilities need to be contemporary and flexible. The way to gain these continually updated skills and knowledge is immense. However, recognising them in a way that is translatable across academia and work providers is limited. This research surveys how Australasian universities approach micro- credentialing to maintain the currency of its offerings and how the sector's higher education landscape is evolving to meet this need. As there has been no comprehensive benchmarking of micro-credentialing in Australasian higher education thus far, the importance of this work will be to initially benchmark these initiatives and to help progress work in this new field of endeavour. The method employed in this survey was to approach Pro Vice-Chancellors (PVC) Education or equivalent in ACODE member universities, via email. The survey was hosted on Qualtrics. With participants permission, the responses are collated and shared with ACODE members as per usual practice of knowledge sharing and wider dissemination via presentations and publications. Australian, New Zealand and Fijian universities are well-represented in ACODE with relevant staff who can direct the survey to PVCs on micro-credentialing. 47 member institutions were sent the survey with 34 institutions2 responding (72%). Participants were asked a series of 17 questions to ascertain the level of micro-credentialing work being done.

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• COVID-19 Exam Software Survey – 2020

  Michael Sankey

  With the advent of COVID-19 and ensuing social distancing measures, universities in the Australasian higher education sector found themselves not being able to run their traditional face to face examinations (in the majority of cases). This required all institutions to look for alternative methods and processes to run these important. In many cases institutions pivoted quickly and implemented a range of online proctoring tools, while others changed the forms of assessment that were required, replacing their traditional exams with other forms of online assessment. To try and understand how universities in the Australasian sector dealt with this and to further distil some of the lessons learned from pivoting quickly to implement their solutions, The Australasian Council on Open Distance and eLearning (ACODE), in collaboration with the Council of Australasian University Directors of Information Technology (CAUDIT) ran a survey designed to provide all institutions with a sector-wide perspective on this. The survey contained questions asking which solution/s the institutions implemented and how successfully they implemented them (see Appendix B, page 9). They were asked to reflect on some lessons learned from the implementation, share some of the service and technical issues they encountered, and to indicate whether they would continue with the solution they chose, or consider other options in the future. Every public University in Australia and New Zealand responded to the survey, along with one institution from Fiji and one University College (both ACODE Members institutions). In total this was 47 Institutions.

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