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2018: ASCILITE 2018 Conference Proceedings

 

 

 

 

The proceedings of the 2018 ASCILITE Conference. Open Oceans: Learning Without Borders

M. Campbell, J. Willems, C. Adachi, D. Blake, I. Doherty, S. Krishnan, S. Macfarlane, L. Ngo, M. O’Donnell, S. Palmer, L. Riddell, I. Story, H. Suri & J. Tai (Eds.), Open Oceans: Learning Without Borders. Proceedings ASCILITE 2018. Geelong.

Deakin University, Geelong, Australia

November 25-28 2018

ASCILITE2018 Conference Website https://2018conference.ascilite.org/

 

Published: 20 November 2018

ASCILITE Conference - Full Papers

  • Designing personalised, automated feedback to develop students’ research writing skills

    Sophie Abel, Kirsty Kitto, Simon Knight, Simon Buckingham Shum

    Constructive and formative feedback on writing is crucial to help Higher Degree Research (HDR) students develop effective writing skills and succeed, both in their degree and beyond. However, at the start students have a poor grasp of good academic writing, and HDR supervisors do not always have the time or the writing expertise to provide quality, constructive, formative feedback to students. One approach to address this problem is provided by Writing Analytics (WA), using text analytics to provide timely, formative feedback to students on their writing, in the process introducing a clear set of terms to describe important features of academic writing. This paper describes how Swales’ (1990) Create A Research Space (CARS) model was used to extend a writing analytics tool such that it could be applied to HDR students’ writing, and how good feedback practices were employed to design constructive automated feedback. This work summarises a process that can be used to develop theory driven writing analytics tools that should facilitate thesis writing.

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  • Digital identity and e-reputation: Showcasing an adaptive eLearning module to develop students’ digital literacies

    Reem Al-Mahmood, Jenny Corbin, Logan Balavijendran, Caroline Ondracek

    How and why is one’s digital identity and e-reputation so important? This question underpins the “Digital Identity: Making Your Mark!” adaptive eLearning module which empowers students to critically engage and evaluate the impact of their e-reputation and the power of Social Media on their academic, professional and social lives – a vital digital literacy. The online adaptive module was developed by an Australian university cross-disciplinary team of academics, educational designers and librarians with the Australian-based global adaptive e-learning company, Smart Sparrow. The module’s aim is to engage students via transformative personalised eLearning activities to explore the impact of their digital identities, e-reputation and the power of Social Media on their lives. Students explore how their e-reputation across various Social Media platforms can influence their social, academic, and professional spheres by interrogating their Social Media use and what constitutes responsible and ethical “digital citizenship”. This paper showcases the module’s design, innovations, and user evaluations that highlight its significant impact and success encapsulated in student voices, “Very eye-opening and engaging!” and “It taught me how to be a better person online!”

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  • Ready to Study: An online tool to measure learning and align university and student expectations via reflection and personalisation

    Logan Balavijendran, Morag Burnie

    Despite widespread implementation of initiatives to support student transition into higher education, research reports that many students, both undergraduate and graduate, still lack awareness of expectations and preparedness for study (Baik, Naylor & Arkoudis, 2015; Ozga & Sukhnandan, 1998; Drew 2001; Haggis & Pouget, 2002; Wingate, 2007). In this paper we report on the design and development of an online adaptive diagnostic module to help students better understand the expectations of studying at a large Australian university, reflect on and evaluate their current skill level in relation to these expectations, and address any skills gaps. The module1 was designed to (1) gather evidence of student needs through analysis of student perceptions and behaviours, (2) be personalised enough to maximise opportunity for students to reflect on and self-regulate learning, and (3) be scalable and sustainable enough to develop and maintain within resourcing constraints. Preliminary learning analytics and student surveys from the pilot (n=402) indicate that this approach allowed students, teachers and developers to measure current learning in relation to expectations and take action. Importantly, it was also easily embedded in and adapted for different contexts.

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  • The Momentum Program: Digital badges for law students

    Scott Beattie, Wayne Jones

    The Momentum Program is an extra-curricular model of digital badged based credentialing for law students studying at CQ University. In that program, students can choose to engage in online workshops and face challenges that earn credentials, recognising professional skills in both traditional and emerging 21st century lawyering. This paper is a reflection on the design process undertaken and the key insights derived from the first stages of creation and implementation.

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  • Using continuous assessment with feedback loops to generate useful data for learning analytics

    Ole Eggers Bjælde, Annika Büchert Lindberg

    The combination of feedback loops and continuous assessment through learning management systems can enhance student learning and produce data to illustrate it, to both students and educators. This paper presents learning designs, examples and data, representing this combination, in which students receive feedback from different sources and are given the opportunity to apply the feedback to improve their performance, hereby closing a feedback loop. The examples and data, presented in this paper, come from higher education in Denmark where assessment since 2016 has been in a transition phase from single end-of-semester exams to continuous assessment. Data in this transition phase is extremely helpful in documenting the effect of the learning design and in informing the teaching and learning process, for example in demonstrating how students use feedback to increase their scores and in allowing educators to identify students at risk of failing or dropping out. The generic learning design will be used as inspiration for educators to ensure that student learning is supported by both continuous assessment and feedback loops. In addition, the design will be developed further to strengthen the focus on the development of students’ evaluative judgement.

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  • Developing collegial cultures of teaching innovation: Motivating influences and impact of university colleagues sharing digital stories of learning and teaching

    Heidi Blair, Louise Maddock, Simone Poulsen

    Fostering cultures of teaching innovation contributes to the transformation of learning and teaching practices in higher education. Enabling university colleagues to share their practice stories is essential for the development of collegial and collaborative communities of practice that provide peer support for colleagues engaged in continuing professional learning related to learning and teaching practice enhancement. This paper describes a university-wide technology-enhanced professional learning strategy aiming to provide a dynamic collection of multimedia digital narratives of teaching practices via an open education resources (OER) repository. This study investigated the factors that motivated university colleagues to share their learning and teaching experiences and practices, the value of sharing their practice with others and the perceived impact of creating these narratives. The results of a preliminary online survey of contributors included that respondents were very strongly motivated to share their practices with peers (92%) and found the process valuable for promoting reflective practice (75%). Semi- structured interviews with contributors indicated the value of collegial conversations involved in creation of the resources. Implications for developing sustainable cultures of university teaching innovation in discipline contexts and future directions for further studies are discussed.

    Read article: Developing collegial cultures of teaching innovation: Motivating influences and impact of university colleagues sharing digital stories of learning and teaching

  • ‘Everything is connected’: Exploring the intersections between life, work, play and education through student use of technology in self-directed learning

    Peter Bryant

    How students engage in learning outside the classroom is complex and in part a self-determined activity. Occurring in spaces on and off campus and using technology students themselves bring to their learning or provided for them by the University, self-directed learning has increasingly become a fractured, unsupported and unstructured component of modern higher education. This article draws on the digital stories of 182 students at the London School of Economics and Political Science (UK) to interrogate how students respond and react to the requirements of learning arising from classroom teaching and summative assessment. The stories exposed liminal spaces in which students are constructing learning in unique and some fragile interconnections between life, work, play and learning.

    Read article: ‘Everything is connected’: Exploring the intersections between life, work, play and education through student use of technology in self-directed learning

  • Designing a Virtual Health Faculty Hub

    Thomas Cochrane, Stephen Aiello, Stuart Cook, Todd Stretton, Sally Britnell, Vickel Narayan, Claudio Aguayo

    In this paper, we discuss the design of a 360-degree virtual environment experience for Health School students to explore seven university health disciplines within the School of Clinical Science. This teaching approach uses the Seekbeak 360-degree online platform to create a virtual environment and a rhizomatic learning pedagogy to encourage participatory and negotiated community engagement. Participants engage with a 360-degree virtual scene that allows exploration of each of the health disciplines. This allows the student to experience core competencies and example environments for each discipline via a centralised single hub. Informed by a Design-Based Research methodology we discuss the first prototype stage of the virtual health hub that has been developed using Seekbeak. The virtual health faculty hub aims to create an inexpensive mobile BYOD immersive environment for 578 first year Health School students to explore and experience the health teams with whom they will collaborate in real world situations upon graduation.

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  • Comparing spaced repetition algorithms for legal digital flashcards

    Stephen Colbran, Wayne Jones, John Milburn

    This study compares two digital flashcard spaced repetition algorithms to evaluate whether the SuperMemo 2 (SM2) algorithm produces better outcomes for law student learning as measured by assessment results than the older Leitner algorithm. Academic staff prepared hundreds of digital flashcards related to an undergraduate law unit – Introduction to law. Undergraduate law students (n=47) were randomly assigned flashcards using two variations of a software program FlashCram, one version of which used a simple Leitner algorithm, another version the SM2 algorithm for spaced repetition. Students completed three practical assignments, two worth 10%, one worth 20%. and a theoretical examination worth 60% of their final grade. The results confirmed SuperMemo 2 to be a superior algorithm over Leitner with respect to the theoretical examination. There was no significant difference between the algorithms for practical assessment that was skills based, not dependent on memory and not subject to any significant time pressure. The results suggest that the usefulness of spaced repetition digital flashcard systems for legal studies may depend upon the nature of the assessment task.

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  • Digital Literacy Expectations in Higher Education

    J. Coldwell-Neilson

    Despite the widespread use of the term digital literacy, there is no common understanding of what it means or what skills and capabilities should be captured within it. The impact for higher education is that the term is misunderstood and significant assumptions are made regarding students’ digital literacy capabilities. The study reported in this paper explores the mismatch between academic expectations and perceptions of students’ digital literacy capabilities. Data was collected via a survey distributed to all Australian higher education institutions. Outcomes indicate that academics expectations are far higher than what they observe of students’ digital literacy capabilities and that digital literacy skills are not being adequately scaffolded and extended through the curriculum. Improving digital literacy outcomes will not occur until responsibility for teaching these capabilities is explicitly expressed and actioned in the context of disciplines and that opportunities are included throughout students’ educational experiences to scaffold digital literacy learning.

    Read article: Digital Literacy Expectations in Higher Education

  • Technology-enabled feedback: It’s time for a critical review of research and practice

    Christopher Deneen, Cassim Munshi

    Globally, there are significant policy initiatives and commitment of resources towards technology- enabled feedback (TEF) adoption across the k-16 spectrum. TEF suffers from chronic problems, however. Sustained integration of TEF into curricula is infrequent; technology abandonment remains common. This paper explores the gap between TEF aspiration and adoption through a review of relevant literature. The literature review is treated as act of research; a sequential method of identifying, evaluating, and critically analysing sources was applied and is thoroughly explained. Findings are presented and discussed. These include a fundamental quality concern within the field of TEF research that may impact legitimacy of research to inform both further research and sustained adoption. Recommendations are made for addressing concerns and achieving progress.

    Read article: Technology-enabled feedback: It’s time for a critical review of research and practice

  • Do-it-yourself e-Exams

    Mathew Hillier, Scott Grant

    This paper focuses on a small case study in which we developed and tested a set of spreadsheets as a 'do-it-yourself' e-examination delivery and marking environment. A trial was conducted in a first-year university level class during 2017 at Monash University, Australia. The approach enabled automatic marking for selected response questions and semi-automatic marking for short text responses. The system did not require a network or servers to operate therefore minimising the reliance on complex infrastructure. We paid particular attention to the integrity of the assessment process by ensuring separation of the answer key from the response composition environment. Students undertook a practice session followed by an invigilated exam. Student's perceptions of the process were collected using pre-post surveys (n = 16) comprising qualitative comments and Likert items. The data revealed that students were satisfied with the process (4 or above on 5-point scales). Comments revealed that their experience was in part influenced by their level of computer literacy with respect to enabling skills in the subject domain. Overall the approach was found to be successful with all students successfully completing the e-exam and administrative efficiencies realised in terms of marking time saved.

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  • Towards authentic e-Exams at scale: Robust networked Moodle

    Mathew Hillier, Scott Grant, Martin Coleman

    In this paper we present the design and user evaluation of a resilient online e-Exam platform that is capable of working without a network for most of the exam session, including the conclusion of an exam, without loss of data. We draw upon the education and technology acceptance literature as a basis for evaluation. The technology approach takes advantage of the Moodle learning management system quiz module as a means to provide an electronic workflow for assessments and builds on a range of open source components to construct the robust solution. The approach also enables rich, constructed assessment tasks by providing authentic ‘e-tools of the trade’ software applications and a consistent operating system on each student’s BYO laptop. The robust Moodle exam deployment was trialled in two undergraduate units (subjects) at an Australian university. Students undertook a sequence of practice, mid-term and a final examination using the platform. Additional software and audio files were utilised as part of the exams. Student feedback on their experience was collected using pre and post surveys covering a range of issues related to technology acceptance.

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Showing 1–13 of 83 articles