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2022: ASCILITE 2022 Conference Proceedings: Reconnecting relationships through technology

The proceedings of the 2022 ASCILITE Conference, Reconnecting relationships through technology.

S. Wilson, N. Arthars,D.Wardak, P. Yeoman, E. Kalman,&D.Y.T.Liu(Eds.), Reconnecting relationships through technology. Proceedings of the 39th International Conference on Innovation, Practice and Research in the Use of Educational Technologies in Tertiary Education, ASCILITE 2022 in Sydney.

Published: 18 November 2022

Full Issue

ASCILITE Conference - Concise Papers

  • Recorded audio feedback: bridging the chasm between educator and student in online assessment

    James A. Tsatsaronis, Katrina J. Binger, Fiona M. Durand

    Provision of detailed and constructive feedback on written assessments is a challenge in many contexts. Increasing instructor workloads due to growth in class sizes further complicates having personalised feedback to student achievements. This paper reports using recorded audio feedback on written assessments and evaluating student perceptions of this feedback using a mixed methods approach. Students receiving recorded audio feedback were surveyed and their perceptions towards the feedback they received further probed via semi-structured interviews. Survey numerical data indicate that students found the feedback convenient and easy to access, clear and easy to understand and more personal than written feedback. Survey open responses and interview responses were thematically analysed and identified major themes and subthemes that supported and further explained the numerical data. This study helps describe student perceptions to recorded audio feedback, which may be a useful tool for helping connect instructors and their students in different learning environments.

    Read article: Recorded audio feedback: bridging the chasm between educator and student in online assessment

  • Flexible Learning and the Virtual Campus

    Lisa Jacka, Julie Lindsay

    Recent global events put a spotlight on learning modes that are flexible and support diverse learners. Vital to this conversation is a redefinition of the concept and practice of a ‘virtual campus’. One in which learners have a renewed sense of place, inclusive of options for learning in synchronous and asynchronous modes. This paper proposes the principles of HyFlex design to facilitate the reconnection of students, teachers, and technology. Furthermore, these principles are extended into a new model of interconnected attributes - student choice, flat learning, and access. The discussion provides insights into these attributes and reimagines effective contextual approaches. Success through student-driven flexible and inclusive course design is shared encouraging the reader to consider their own adoption and adaption of these principles.

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  • Conversations that count in online student engagement – a case study

    Linda M. Rowan, Ying Jin

    A challenge all teachers face is how to engage students meaningfully in their learning. The impact of Covid has made online learning in higher education more prevalent. While many students and teachers have readily adjusted to these new learning environments others have found the shift difficult. To enable students’ adjustment to new ways of learning teachers and course designers should consider approaches which encourage and support positive experiences and attitudes towards online learning. Students’ participation and engagement grows when good course design and a variety of learning activities are used and conveyed to them in clear communication that guides their learning processes. This case study looks at one teacher’s intentions and actions to improve student engagement within a health science core course through collecting ‘student voice’, students’ perspectives of what helped their learning and what could be improved to enhance their learning online.

    Read article: Conversations that count in online student engagement – a case study

  • Connecting students with ‘industry’: A pilot implementation of authentic assessment tasks in business education

    Sandra Barker

    Universities are continuing to encourage academics to implement more authentic assessment strategies into their teaching and learning activities to ensure that students are work-ready on graduation. Connecting students with the expectations of industry through these assessments encourages students to identify key competencies which need to be strengthened in order to ensure they are employable upon graduation. Since COVID-19 struck in early 2020, we have all had to consider how technology can assist in connecting people to continue to be able to work. This is no truer than with students and teaching staff as well as connecting students with industry. This paper reports on the implementation of a new authentic assessment project for business students where students worked both face-to-face and online to complete a major work-based project.

    Read article: Connecting students with ‘industry’: A pilot implementation of authentic assessment tasks in business education

  • How can EdTech support graduate employability?

    Kirsty Kitto

    Pressure is mounting upon universities to ensure that our graduates are employable. Business and governments increasingly demand that graduates are equipped with skills and competencies that map into labour market needs. But students often struggle to choose courses, subjects and activities that will support their career goals and aspirations. This paper introduces an approach designed at UTS which aims to embed a skills analytics tool at key transition points for our students. The need to support such tools will a well-grounded learning design is discussed, along with the need to move beyond a “one size fits all” model for supporting EdTech tools. A solution that utilises a series of modules in the LMS is introduced.

    Read article: How can EdTech support graduate employability?

  • Diverse definitions of engagement: Personalised learning analytics to support staff and students

    Alix Thoeming, Aaron Baird, Ruth Weeks, Danny Liu, Harriet Flitcroft, Adam Bridgeman

    Although teachers design learning experiences, their pedagogical and pastoral connections to students and teaching are often unaccounted for in learning analytics approaches. What is needed for analytics to reconnect teachers and students at a unit and program level, and help unit and program coordinators support those students who need it most? We present the approaches and findings from a pilot initiative where a freely available learning analytics platform allowed unit coordinators to define their own contextually unique measures of engagement and allowed program coordinators to see across units. We discuss the forms of outreach afforded by the initiative, the support provided to coordinators, and the implications of learning analytics that are not one-size-fits-all on using data meaningfully to support human connection.

    Read article: Diverse definitions of engagement: Personalised learning analytics to support staff and students

  • Defining a next-generation ecosystem for online learning: from changing the platform to shifting the paradigm

    Sarah Thorneycroft

    While disruptive and disconnecting, the events of the last two years have also created a rich opportunity to change how we think about what we do and the contexts we work in. This conceptual paper explores the development of a more complex realisation of the ecological view of online learning and educational technologies as a new paradigm to reconnect people with technology in the organisational context. Drawing on a range of disciplines and practices, a 'next-generation' ecosystem establishes the social and organisational domains as critical additions to the technological and pedagogical domains. Also explored are the ways in which third space practitioners are pivotal in the design and delivery of such an ecosystem, and examples of the ecosystem development in practice. By considering and designing a wide range of experiences and practice domains, the 'next-generation ecosystem' concept may provide a way to meaningfully reconnect people with educational technology.

    Read article: Defining a next-generation ecosystem for online learning: from changing the platform to shifting the paradigm

  • Emerging design solutions for hybridised learning spaces: addressing social practice, privacy and participation

    Steven Warburton, Yishay Mor

    The term ‘hybrid learning space’ (HLS) is loosely used to describe a fusion of learning opportunities and teaching approaches that span physical and virtual spaces. This paper outlines ongoing work to define the contemporary ‘hybridised space’ and build a pattern language that offers reusable design solutions to the challenges of delivering learning and teaching in these new and emerging settings. This paper explores architectural motifs, social practice, privacy and participation to draw out successful design principles for linking HLS to effective pedagogy.

    Read article: Emerging design solutions for hybridised learning spaces: addressing social practice, privacy and participation

  • Lightweight Mapping of Identify Verification Methods and Secondary Course Aspects: “Swiss Cheese” Modelling

    William Billingsley

    Curriculum mapping in Australia has grown from early notions of constructive alignment to a governed ongoing commitment by institutions to the curriculum structures they have developed. These consider primary aspects of a degree: learning outcomes and how they are achieved. In this paper I describe the need for a descriptive set of mappings for secondary (or quality) aspects of a degree. Notably, mapping the identity verified assessment mechanisms used across a degree can support conversations with accreditors and reviewers around defences against cheating. In 2020 and 2021, many universities were forced to cancel paper-based examinations and academics altered their assessment mechanisms. Mapping the mechanisms that were adopted can reconnect those individual choices with their purpose within the degree. The paper is an experience report from the development of an accreditation submission for a suite of computer science cognate degrees. Other descriptive mappings developed within the submission are also described.

    Read article: Lightweight Mapping of Identify Verification Methods and Secondary Course Aspects: “Swiss Cheese” Modelling

  • Developing a learning analytics resource with meaningful data for first year teachers

    Noelia Roman, Kelly Linden, Sarah Teakel, Neil Van der Ploeg, Ben Hicks

    It is known that due to the large, diverse sets of data captured in learning analytics, clear display of information is crucial to its success. Here, we describe a concise learning analytics resource, the Cohort Snapshot, that has been developed using a human centred approach, with input from experienced academics from across the institution. Meaningful data is presented as a unit level summary and includes program enrolment, student demographics, grade distributions and LMS activity. The data that was used to develop the resource was accessed via the university’s data warehouse which was synthesised using the R programming language. The Cohort Snapshot provides teaching academics, including sessional staff, access to data, to allow the adaption of teaching pedagogy to meet the needs of increasingly diverse student cohorts in a regional Australian university.

    Read article: Developing a learning analytics resource with meaningful data for first year teachers

  • Thanks for the feedback: Reconnecting students with educators using a metacommunication feedback tool

    Lauren Humby, Trisha Poole, Alex Charchar

    Given the vast number of learning and teaching tools available to assist in the online delivery of courses, academics and educators have found it difficult to identify which tools students find the most useful for learning. This paper discusses the development of a new tool conceptualised and developed by the authors of this concise paper, which is designed to elicit immediate student feedback about online learning content and activities. Results from a small pilot study examining the potential of the tool to measure and improve student engagement in a second-year criminology elective delivered online are also presented. Providing opportunities for students to give immediate feedback is vital to improving the quality of learning and teaching. Educators can (re)connect with students studying online, improve their understanding of the needs of online learners, and tailor learning content and activities throughout the semester leading to improved student satisfaction, student-teacher relationships, and learner outcomes.

    Read article: Thanks for the feedback: Reconnecting students with educators using a metacommunication feedback tool

  • Bridging education to employment through virtual experience placement

    Sabina Cerimagic, Natasha Arthars, Danielle Eden, Jeremy Grunfeld

    The transition from education to employment is a pivotal point for students. Workplace experience can play a key role in a student’s transition to full-time work. Despite the important role in bridging the gap between education and employment, students’ participation in work-integrated learning (WIL) experiences varies significantly across disciplines. Through participant surveys, we examined students’ reasons for, and benefits of, undertaking WIL opportunities online through Forage: a platform facilitating access to virtual and simulated placements in partnership with employer organisations. Virtual and simulated WIL experiences have gained interest, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings show that virtual or simulated WIL experiences are inclusive opportunities that can assist students, including those studying in areas with a historically low prevalence of WIL, in both career and organisation exploration.

    Read article: Bridging education to employment through virtual experience placement

  • In the business of connecting: Nudging students

    Lynn C Gribble, Elaine Huber

    We have long been leveraging the use of technologies to help build and sustain connections in the online environment. The pandemic opened our eyes to the value of these connections and the ability to better use technologies to facilitate them. Now we must question what more we can do. Creating communities through safe environments, building trust, showing students our ‘human’ sides through rapport building and teacher presence which may have previously been hidden in plain sight when operating in a face-to-face mode are a good start. By breaking down traditional barriers brought about through power relationships, the foundations of a quality learning experience are both created and maintained. Using case scenarios and personal narrative from two metropolitan university business schools, we explore techniques that have been used to build connections during lockdowns and begin to reconnect as we emerge from the pandemic. We found that nudging our students through initial uncomfortableness really helped them feel part of a community of learners, one which we also belonged.

    Read article: In the business of connecting: Nudging students

Showing 40–52 of 59 articles