2022: ASCILITE 2022 Conference Companion Materials

ASCILITE Conference - Pecha Kuchas

• The Practical Connection

  Louise Luff, Janine Coupe , Mark Waddington

  From the rapid adoption of online teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic, learning communities have become abstract, disconnected, and failed to provide effective social interaction and connection opportunities (Martin, 2020). Mindful of the related impact on students’ intrinsic motivation and learning, a first-year accounting unit was reimagined and reinvented with a practical connection student centred teaching approach. A student-centred learning environment focused on students understanding the relationship of accounting information and its users, the business world and skilful accounting professionals. Teaching materials, assessment tasks and learning management system (LMS) were transformed to greatly enrich meaningful student connection, motivation, and deeper learning (Turner & Baskerville, 2013). This presentation will showcase aspects of the unit’s practical connection approach, specifically highlighting innovative use of technology enhanced learning in the unit to support student development and student voice through peer learning. To promote purpose, the unit’s LMS explains why each topic is studied, relevant connections to graduate attributes, business world and why each type of assessment is adopted (Tharapos, 2021). Assessment tasks were recreated to assist student’s development of disciplinary experience, critical thinking and problem solving, and integrated professional, ethical, and personal identity skills graduate attributes (Cloete, 2018). In-tutorial group work case study style discussion and practical Excel questions are used (Villarroel et al, 2018), constructively aligned exam questions adopted, linked reflective tasks developed and weekly topic quizzes, directly connected to lecture discussion, run before weekly tutorials. Lectures and tutorials are constructed as working relationships with educators and industry. Content is built on a real-world company’s financial statements, contain contemporary discussion and practical Excel spreadsheet and MYOB demonstrations that students concurrently work along with on their own and, throughout each lecture, students complete a lecture concepts worksheet. Technology enhanced learning tools were effectively used to foster student to student collaboration and educator and student relationships. Using Padlet, students work in groups to collaboratively complete tutorial discussion questions. High quality answers are shared in an interactive Padlet on the unit’s LMS accompanied with a past student tip. To assist students with their first reflective task, a reflective activity on Menti is undertaken. Highly reflective exemplars are also shared on the unit’s LMS with further staff comments and feedback. Personalised emails were used to welcome students, individually reach out and support disengaged students during semester and to provide tailored mid semester feedback that directed students to specific homework and tutorial questions and lecture examples for self-reflection. Student voice was used as a narrative to promote student connection and collaboration (Matthews & Dollinger, 2022). Past students, as partners in learning, shared their unit experiences in conversation videos which were engrained into the unit’s LMS and tutorial activities. In addition, the staff voice was used to explain connective links to subsequent unit’s objectives and content. Early development of professional skills, graduate attributes, and readiness to understand business world transactions must start in a student’s initial university year. This informed many aspects of this exemplary first year accounting unit redesign. To promote purpose, the unit’s LMS explains why each topic is studied, relevant connections to graduate attributes, business world and why each type of assessment is adopted (Tharapos, 2021). Assessment tasks were recreated to assist student’s development of disciplinary experience, critical thinking and problem solving, and integrated professional, ethical, and personal identity skills graduate attributes (Cloete, 2018). In-tutorial group work case study style discussion and practical Excel questions are used (Villarroel et al, 2018), constructively aligned exam questions adopted, linked reflective tasks developed and weekly topic quizzes, directly connected to lecture discussion, run before weekly tutorials. Lectures and tutorials are constructed as working relationships with educators and industry. Content is built on a real-world company’s financial statements, contain contemporary discussion and practical Excel spreadsheet and MYOB demonstrations that students concurrently work along with on their own and, throughout each lecture, students complete a lecture concepts worksheet. Technology enhanced learning tools were effectively used to foster student to student collaboration and educator and student relationships. Using Padlet, students work in groups to collaboratively complete tutorial discussion questions. High quality answers are shared in an interactive Padlet on the unit’s LMS accompanied with a past student tip. To assist students with their first reflective task, a reflective activity on Menti is undertaken. Highly reflective exemplars are also shared on the unit’s LMS with further staff comments and feedback. Personalised emails were used to welcome students, individually reach out and support disengaged students during semester and to provide tailored mid semester feedback that directed students to specific homework and tutorial questions and lecture examples for self-reflection. Student voice was used as a narrative to promote student connection and collaboration (Matthews & Dollinger, 2022). Past students, as partners in learning, shared their unit experiences in conversation videos which were engrained into the unit’s LMS and tutorial activities. In addition, the staff voice was used to explain connective links to subsequent unit’s objectives and content. Early development of professional skills, graduate attributes, and readiness to understand business world transactions must start in a student’s initial university year. This informed many aspects of this exemplary first year accounting unit redesign.

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• Online exams: exploring student experience and integrity behaviours as we return to campus

  Michael Henderson, Rebecca Awdry, Jennifer Chung, Cliff Ashford, Mike Bryant, Matthew Mundy, Kris Ryan

  On campus activity is resuming following two years of working and studying at home. Institutions are now faced with the opportunity and challenge of reconnecting students with an on campus environment while retaining the flexibility of online learning and assessment. During the pandemic there was a large uptake in the use of online remote exams combined with a variety of assessment security measures including proctoring tools designed to monitor student behaviour. Scholars and commentators alike have reported on positive and negative effects of these online assessment and security measures (Coghlan et al., 2021; Harwell, 2020; Selwyn et al., 2021; Stewart, 2020; White, 2020; Zhou, 2020). In particular, online proctoring technologies have been reported by some scholars to improve academic integrity behaviours (Dawson, 2020; Dendir & Maxwell, 2020; Dyer et al., 2020; Gudiño Paredes et al., 2021; Hylton et al., 2016) while others have reported less favourable results impacting the broader student experience. For example, online exams have been shown to impact student satisfaction with their online exam experience (Dawson, 2020; Gudiño Paredes et al., 2021; Harwell, 2020; Jaap et al., 2021) and academic performance (Dendir & Maxwell, 2020; Lee & Fanguy, 2022; Milone et al., 2017). As students return to campus, institutions are faced with the dilemma of deciding what online assessment practices should be retained, adapted, or discarded. This Pecha Kucha reports on a comparison of off campus and on campus student experiences of online exams and assessment security measures including online proctoring. This Pecha Kucha will report on one of Australia’s largest university-wide student exam experience surveys. Our large dataset comprising over 12,000 total responses will reveal preliminary findings of student experience during Semester 2 2021 where students mostly completed online exams remotely at home, compared to student experience during Semester 1 2022 where students mostly completed online exams on-campus. Overall, proctoring conditions between the two teaching periods are relatively comparable, with the major difference being that for the on-campus held exams in Semester 1 2022, students were required to check-in at a physical booth and receive a wristband with QR reader allowing them subsequently check-in to the exam room where they then used their own device to complete the online exam. This study offers unique student perspectives and has allowed us to understand the impact of the varied proctoring and exam conditions on student satisfaction and wellbeing, as well as on academic integrity attitudes such as temptation to cheat and self-reported cheating behaviours. In keeping with the conference ‘reconnect’ theme we focus on comparing the online exam experience of students who have returned to campus with the experience of students who sat an online exam remotely in a private setting. In particular, we explore their satisfaction, preference, perceived academic performance, as well as their motivations and behaviours in relation to (not)cheating. This Pecha Kucha offers actionable insights in relation to the implementation of online exams and online proctoring for student who are studying off campus, but also for those who are returning to campus.

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• Student Feedback Literacy - measurement conceptual framework

  Ian Farmer

  One of the key enablers for learning is feedback. The student’s experience receiving feedback can have long-lasting impacts on their beliefs, motivation and behaviour, which influences academic achievement levels and lifetime learning potential (Carless & Boud, 2018). For students to become proactive in the feedback loop process, they require competencies (understandings, capacities and dispositions) for the feedback process, known as Feedback Literacy (Carless & Winstone, 2020). Student Feedback Literacy (SFL) describes the necessary competencies for students to effectively and proactively engage and act on feedback to improve their learning ability (Sutton, 2012). Whilst the student feedback literacy competencies have been well defined (Molloy et al., 2020), these competencies are difficult to quantify. Therefore feedback literacy remains hidden and, for students, is earned as a by-product of student learning that is only acquired subconsciously through student learning experiences. The conceptual framework in this proposal contributes to Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) by quantifying Student Feedback Literacy levels which inform and trigger additional feedback loops that enable students to grow their feedback literacy, which empowers students’ lifetime learning potential

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• Measuring and Developing Digitally Adept Students with Assurance of Learning (AoL) Rubric

  Gillian Vesty, Ishpal Sandhu, Sam Fearn

  This presentation provides an overview of our innovative and comprehensive process for embedding student digital and professional capabilities and assuring the learning of these capabilities for our Business School’s accreditation and quality assurance purposes. To avoid surface level compliance and ensure all academics were engaged in the change process, we remapped our Program Learning Outcomes to key Competency Goals that met the strategic direction of our Business School, and the University more broadly. Five Competency Goals were developed: Global Citizenship; Ethical Reasoning; Analysis and Problem Solving; Job Ready; Digitally Adept. These were divided into 12 Objectives and underpinned by a suite of carefully designed rubrics to be workshopped and formalised as Assurance of Learning (AoL) Rubrics (Calma, 2021). We included our Business School’s commitment to the Principles of Responsible Management Education (PRME) and ensured the United Nations, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were met in our core competency areas and learning objectives. Because the process followed the strategic direction of our business school, this process gave us a vehicle to showcase our priority areas, which included the innovative approaches taken by academics to enhance the Digitally Adept competency goal in student learning and assessment. An important aspect of the formalised process was the development of a digital Data Extraction Tool (rDET), developed by Ishpal Sandhu and Gillian Vesty, which allowed us to extract components of a rubric that matched each of the 5 competency goals and 12 learning objectives, not only for our AoL sample, but for all students in a course, regardless of course numbers. This automated data collection tool has made it possible to easily capture a wide range of data to reveal distinct areas for improvement in terms of curriculum alignment, assessment design and/or changes that can be made to enhance student experience while getting them ready for life and work. In a multi-dimensional constructive alignment process (Sridharan et al., 2015), the team validated the Competency Goals and Objectives, ensuring they were captured in assessments across all programs, and in all delivery locations. The suite of formal rubrics developed to measure the competency goals became the centrepiece of conversation among the program management teams. To ensure AoL sampling was a true representation of the practices across the Business School, all academics were asked to include the rubrics in their assessments. Importantly, the alignment process undertaken was embedded in formal governance mechanisms and reporting through the hierarchy of committees. The rubrics and template developed was the mechanism to expose current practice gaps and/or achievements of each of the digitally adept learning objectives and competency goals. Recommendations for change in process and/or curriculum were made, and appropriate resourcing provided on agreement. It was important that successful achievement of the digitally adept learning objectives showcased the move away from exams to exemplary authentic learning assessment designs.

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• Using virtual reality to support first-year online initial teacher education students

  Rebecca Walker

  In Australia, online initial teacher education (ITE) has seen enrolments grow at six times the rate of other online degree programs, with 25% of all ITE students commencing studying fully online (Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership, 2020). Online learning provides increased accessibility and flexibility for students (He, 2014; Stone, 2012; Walker et al., 2020). The accessibility provided by online higher education has also been appreciated in the COVID-19 impacted environment; however, online study is different in character to on-campus study and this has raised issues in relation to student experience, engagement, and retention. Students studying online report feeling disconnected from their tutors, peers, learning purpose and higher education providers (Jaques & Salmon, 2010; Gillet-Swan, 2017). Low retention rates have been linked to students’ feelings of disconnection and exacerbated by poor study preparation for online learning (Elliot & Frost, 2018). This means that a critical factor in students’ online study success is orientation and study preparation tailored to their needs. Developing innovative approaches for transitioning online students into higher education is a challenge widely experienced across local, national, and global settings. The innovative use of Virtual Reality (VR) technologies is one approach that has had positive impacts on student engagement and motivation (Huang et al., 2021) and, as Yu (2021) identified in a meta-review of VR literature, promotes learner confidence and achievement. Whilst this emerging research indicates the benefits of using VR in learning and teaching, more exploration is needed to fully understand these and the barriers (Schott & Marshall, 2021). In the context of an online ITE program at an Australian university, research findings are presented from a single descriptive case study (Merriam, 1998) that investigated the impact of a created VR (2D and 3D versions) providing key study orientation information to Bachelor of Education Early Childhood, Primary and Secondary first-year students. The VR was incorporated into the online mandatory first-year technologies education unit and introduced to students in a supported way through recommended online learning and teaching activities. Quantitative and qualitative data that were collected through the online questionnaire Process of Learning with VR (Makransky & Petersen, 2019) examined participants’ experiences and barriers in using the VR (N = 20). Descriptive statistics and mean differences were calculated, and themes identified. Findings revealed participants felt confident using technology, preferred information to be communicated visually, and liked the option of 2D VR for home technology use. Further, the VR made learning more interesting, and the realism assisted in understanding the content. Although the overall results were positive, barriers and challenges were indicated. These include difficulties in accessing the VR using an Apple device, frustration with the movement controls, and feeling that the experience was not personalised enough. Insights gained about using VR to communicate information and support student experience are significant given the continuing rise of online higher education. The need for continued research and innovative use of technologies so that online education programs can be effectively humanised is particularly noted. The introduction of VR to online ITE students has additional ramifications for them as future teachers. This is a potential area of related study.

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• Using Emotional Learning Analytics to Improve Students’ Engagement in Online Learning

  Chaitali Samani, Amara Atif, Kaska Musial-Gabrys

  Online learning is learning enabled by technology as students’ interact with subject content, access and download resources, watch videos, and participate in online quizzes. Epistemic Emotions (EE), e.g., curiosity, surprise, confusion, frustration or boredom has a complex impact when learning online due to the lack of real-time feedback loop. It becomes vital to detect such emotions timely and accurately before they starts impacting the leaner adversely (e.g., D’Mello et al., 2017; Kosasi et al., 2020). EE activate or confines the learning. EE can be positive (surprise, enjoyment) or negative (frustration, boredom), or two folded (confusion). Positive emotions contribute to learning achievement, while negative emotions can cause frustration or anxiety, leading to impaired learning. Emotions are ambiguous and dynamic, and without innovations in learning analytics (LA) and Educational Data Mining, it is challenging to predict such emotions (D’Mello, S., 2017). This extended abstract focuses on how LA can help detect surprise and confusion in online learning, ultimately accomplishing achievement emotion(s) in learners. LA provides tools and techniques to measure, collect, analyse, and report interaction data of students. Deeper data analysis of all kinds of digital traces collected on online learning platforms has the potential to detect emotional and cognitive states (Karaoglan & Yilmez 2022; Han et. al., 2021; Silvola et al., 2021). Innovations in emotional learning analytics leverage the voluminous and heterogeneous data available and propose adopting data-driven analytical approaches to study the impact of such emotions on students’ engagement and cognition. EE like surprise helps learners discover new knowledge, and improve memory and focus and cognition (Foster & Keane, 2019). It adds the "novelty factor" to nourish students' curiosity and motivation (Hayden et al., 2011; Roesch et al., 2012). Whilst, confusion has a complex impact on cognition. Confusion causes disequilibrium due to incongruent information (Arguel et al., 2017). When students overcome the confusion, it helps in positive learning gains, but prolonged confusion can leave a student frustrated or bored, impeding their learning (Atapattu et al., 2019; Baker et al., 2010). The voluminous activity log data is valuable and non-intrusive source of information in detecting important epistemic emotions and can help identify potential learning difficulties. Such data promotes unbiased real-time assessment of emotions and is technically easy to deploy simultaneously. Text data on online platforms are analysed to isolate emotions like confusion and frustration (e.g., Ai et al., 2006; Lee et al., 2011). Online quiz data is analysed using fuzzy logic inferences (Author, 2021) and multilayer perceptron (Author, 2021) techniques to detect confusion in online learning. Both surprise and confusion can be induced to promote meaningful learning, for example, some studies have added conflicting text or triggered high-confidence errors in their experimentation. Epistemic Emotion Scales (EES) were then used to detect surprise, confusion and even curiosity, by analysing the impact of such unexpected text. (e.g Pekrun et al., 2017, Vogl et al., 2020). We show in this study, that LA tools and techniques can be utilised to detect EE to foster meaningful learning engagement and interventions, hence providing great research potential.

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• Designing Effective Work-Integrated Learning for Data Science Students: Considerations and Lessons Learned

  Antonette Shibani, Adrian Buck

  Work integrated learning (WIL) equips students with real-world experiences by bridging the worlds of academia and work, theory and practice, reflection and action. Through WIL, students are able to gain critical life skills such as teamwork, problem-solving, communication, and professionalism, which are key for employability (Freudenberg et al., 2011; Jackson, 2015). They also get to apply the knowledge gained from classroom learning to practical projects, preparing themselves for the workforce. With the increasing demand for job-ready graduates, WIL remains a strategic priority for many higher education providers calling for significant investment in curriculum design (Billett, 2014). Along with the noted benefits, the challenges and factors that require careful consideration for successful WIL design are well established (Jackson, 2015). Past studies have examined approaches and best practices for effective WIL, with more recent work focusing on technology and connectivity in a post-pandemic era (Dean & Campbell, 2020; Schuster & Glavas, 2017). In particular, the foundation lies in strong partnerships between higher education and industry, which is responsive to the needs of all stakeholders (Choy & Delahaye, 2011; Smith & Betts, 2000). In our presentation, we discuss the considerations and lessons learned by educators in delivering a WIL subject for data science students in an Australian higher educational institution. Here, the underlying technicality of the subject involving data sharing and access, confidentiality, and intellectual property rights adds to contextual challenges. Additional challenges include the need to design a valuable student experience which can be scaled up for larger cohorts. The design of project-based learning experiences requires domain expertise, personalized mentorship, and pre-defined outcomes, prompting the shift towards a more problem-based approach where outcome spaces can evolve for transdisciplinary learning (Kligyte et al., 2021). We derive insights from designing an interdisciplinary space for WIL projects with particular focus on the perspectives of different stakeholders involved and managing their expectations and boundaries. This involves co-defining shared problem spaces for projects to create a common understanding across all stakeholders (Billett, 2015); to inform more appropriately aligned authentic assessments (Ajjawi et al., 2020) that are embedded in project work; guiding, supporting and managing team formation and group dynamics to empower students to work as autonomous groups (Brewer et al., 2020); and the use of relevant tools and platforms to facilitate operations and aid learning (Schuster & Glavas, 2017). Feedback from students and industry partners has improved significantly across a 3 year period, with the current subject offerings receiving the highest student and industry satisfaction scores to date. The work contributes to the design of effective WIL by learning from practical experiences of educators before, during, and following the pivot to online learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with lessons transferrable to other WIL contexts. Future work will build on the findings by triangulating with additional data sources including student work.

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• Scaffolding student reconnection with instructors and their peers using Perusall

  Helena Bender, Alexis Pang

  Rapid shifts to hybrid and fully-online learning driven by COVID-19 have reduced opportunities for face-to-face learning interactions. Interactive (social or collaborative) learning, which permits students to reconnect, is believed to result in more learning than solitary or individual learning because interactive learning is generative (Lee et al 2019). University teachers want students to engage independently, actively and deeply with recommended or assigned content as an integral part of their learning. These can be in the form of readings from texts, journal articles or websites; as well as multimedia content such as Youtube videos. However, student engagement with assigned readings is frequently low (Kerr & Frese, 2017). While individual engagement with the assigned content is important, social negotiation of meaning and understanding can support understanding, and facilitate interconnections that build a community learning experience. In the “new normal” of reduced face-to-face student-instructor and student-student interactions and connections, effective techno-pedagogical approaches that interconnect students-instructors-learning materials need to be tried and evaluated. Perusall (www.perusall.com) is an online educational platform that permits social interaction with digital learning resources (e.g., textbook chapters, journal articles, or videos), creates a safe environment where there is no penalty for students in expressing misconceptions, where their peers may offer encouragement (Lee & Yeong 2018), and instructors can scaffold critical thinking and other higher order thinking skills, which can lower students’ perception of the difficulty of material (Lee et al 2019). Unlike LMS discussion boards, annotations, which are facilitated by Perusall, are presented alongside and linked to selected content, and tagging of individuals permits conversations in response to annotations. Annotations and conversations may involve critical reflection, higher order thinking skills (Suhre et al 2019), metacognition (Woodward & Neunaber 2020) and can indicate engagement (Marcell 2008). Yet readers of digital texts rarely add comments (Schugar et al 2011). While Woodward & Neunaber (2020) found that Perusall fostered students’ social interaction over a text, there has been no systematic study to ascertain why students are more engaged or what increases their engagement. We report here on a pilot study that investigated how, within the Perusall environment, student engagement varies with instructor scaffolding. This study was carried out in one undergraduate first-year subject in 2020 and 2021 with a total of 84 students. The students came from different discipline degrees (37% Arts, 4% Biomedicine, 6% Commerce, 14% Design, and 38% Science). The instructors asked questions in 50% of the weeks involved in delivering the subject online or in hybrid mode. Instructors intentionally posted questions and comments on the week 1 reading to model the sorts of annotations that students might partake in. Students were required to make five annotations on the set readings for the week which could take the form of a question or comment. We describe the different scaffolding questions posed by instructors and peers that resulted in a greater frequency of student response, evidence of critical reflection, higher-order thinking and improved student engagement. We also reflect on the implications of these findings for broader teaching and learning.

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• The Health Sciences Scholarship Strategy: a pilot peer-support initiative for academics

  Ashley Hillsley, Danielle Burgess, Amber Moore, Dhivya Rajasekaran , Noosha Ehya, Manisha Thakkar

  This presentation will report on a pilot initiative being undertaken within a team of university academics, with the aim of promoting peer support, space to develop and improve scholarly activity in all its forms. Scholarship and scholarly teaching are at the core of each university academic’s role (Ling, 2020; Boyer, 1990): ensuring currency, best-practice and skill development in a rapidly changing educational landscape (Matos et al., 2022). Communities of Practice (CoP) and peer support are known to encourage academics to participate in scholarly activities and professional development (Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder, 2002), arising from Vygotsky’s theory that learning is enhanced when occurring in a group (Vygotsky, 1978). The project design contains many features of a CoP, such as a shared domain and set of practices; places for discussion and group activities (Jakovljevic, Buckley, & Bushney, 2013). With the support of online technologies, this innovative project aims to provide a framework for supporting Health Science (HS) academics in the development of scholarly teaching practices and their capacity to immerse in scholarship from a discipline community perspective. The project also aims to demonstrate strategies for promoting team member research capabilities, development, and outcomes. Designed to sit within the wider institution research and scholarship centres, strategic plans, policies and procedures, the HS Scholarship Strategy is a local, co-creative initiative being formed through on-going and evolving team member participation and feedback. The HS Scholarship Strategy contains two main components – a community group called the HS Scholarly Teaching Think Tank, and the Research Incubator Group. These groups provide an informal space for team members to ideate, plan, progress and support research and scholarly teaching activities. With team members located around Australia, various technologies are being employed to deliver these components synchronously and asynchronously. In addition, four other sub-initiatives are included in the strategy: peer-support workshops; scholarly forums; a scholarly literature club; and an active teaching development project. The main outcomes of interest are participation and engagement in scholarly development activities. The strategy components, including their aims and specific outcomes being measured, will be further described. Given the challenges of teaching and learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, knowledge sharing has been made easier using technology, within this project of enhancing scholarly capabilities. Overall, this pilot strategy been designed with the support of the literature on peer support and its potential in developing faculty scholarship, academic culture and the construction of professional identity (Van Schyndel, et al., 2019; Clarke, Hyde, & Drennan, 2013 In alignment with these theoretical bases, this presentation will share early findings and areas for further professional development. There is potential for broader implementation in other teams across the university. This may be of interest to academic and other university teams looking for contextualised, team-based strategies for improving scholarship activities and scholarly teaching outcomes.

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• UDL Implementation in Higher Education: Drawing lessons from the COVID online pivot and reconnecting with inclusive design in the face-to-face classroom

  Frederic Fovet

  After two decades of advocacy across North American campuses, it is fair to assert that Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is finally having an impact on the inclusion of students with disabilities across campuses (Schreffler et al., 2019). It is helping shift instructors and departments away from medical model approaches to students with disabilities (Edwards et al., 2022), and facilitating the adoption of the social model of disability in classroom practices (Fovet, 2014). In 2020, however, the COVID-19 pandemic forced campus closures and an overnight shift to online instruction and assessment across the world (Hodges et al, 2020). Many have argued that this pivot has helped increase awareness of accessibility and has developed inclusive design as a mindset among instructors (Dhawan, 2020). Equally numerous are researchers and practitioners who feel that the pandemic has weakened institutions’ commitment to inclusion, made accessible learning more difficult to achieve, and generally hindered the development of UDL in higher education (Napierala et al., 2022). This dichotomy in perspectives is pervasive and encountered in most jurisdictions; it demonstrates the need for higher educators to ‘reconnect’ despite these lived experiences and to journey collectively and collaboratively towards more inclusive practices, in this period of healing. This interactive session will lead the audience in assessing to what extent each of these assertions might be true, and how campuses can draw important lessons from these experiences, in relation to UDL implementation – particularly in Technology Enhanced Environments (TELs). It will examine how researchers and practitioners must draw from lessons learnt in online teaching and learning in these two disruptive years to ‘reconnect’ with the inclusive design mindset et advance UDL implementation as they return to the fade to face classroom. It will demonstrate how sometimes difficult and rushed reflections around inclusive design in TELs that occurred during the global health crisis, now have the potential to radically overhaul previous attitudes and assumptions, and to erode initial resistance to inclusive design as a mindset. The presentation draws from multiple interactive workshops which have been offered to UDL advocates and faculty throughout the pandemic. It presents the analysis of phenomenological data gathered throughout these professional development sessions.

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• Demonstrating cultural diversity and inclusivity in selecting academics in higher education in Australia

  Kashmira Dave, Philip Uys

  Benefits of a diversified workforce is undeniable. This paper outlines research in progress into racial, cultural and gender influence on the selection processes of academic positions in higher education in Australia. We argue that a genuine aim of cultural diversity and inclusivity among students needs to be preceded and demonstrated by the same goal in selecting academics in higher education. This work is important as there is no study in Australia on how the university's academic selection is influenced by the decision-maker's personal and organisational characteristics and belief systems. This research aims to collect data from the university employees who have been interviewed for academic positions and from staff who have served on selection panels. The research will employ a survey followed by optional semi-structured interviews. Descriptive and thematic analysis will be carried out on the survey data. The interview data will be analysed using verbal data analysis. The result of this research would provide insight into how the cultural, racial and gender identity of the candidate and members of selection panels influence the selection process in academic recruitment in Australian universities and thus demonstrate the aim of cultural diversity and inclusivity among academic staff and students.

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• Scale-up of the Artisans: Creating practices, systems & tools for a team of learning designers

  Tim Klapdor

  As institutions seek to increase their capacity in various modes and models of instruction, they are relying more heavily on learning designers to implement these projects. This has created a need to scale-up beyond the artisanal approaches and practices of traditional learning design. This presentation will explore the development of collaborative practices, the use of learning patterns and the development of a new tool, the Smart Storyboard, to help meet the needs of a scaled-up learning design team.

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• Transitioning e-portfolio implementation from early adoption to widespread use

  Carmen Sapsed

  While e-portfolio use in higher education has increased steadily over the past decade (Lu, 2021, McAllistar & Hauville, 2017) challenges and barriers in broad implementation remain (Paulson, & Campbell, 2018). After several years of ‘piloting’ an e-portfolio platform in our faculty, we find ourselves in a position described by Reynolds and Pirie (2016) as the ‘chasm’ between moving from early to majority adoption. This presentation will discuss key barriers we have experienced in transitioning to widespread use of e-portfolio across the faculty and how we have addressed these to date. The pedagogical benefits of e-portfolio adoption for formative assessment and reflection on learning are widely documented (Paulson & Campbell, 2018, Miller & Morgaine, 2009). Integrating the e-portfolio for these purposes at the subject level requires an intentional re-design of the assessment schedule, often resulting in increased opportunities for iterative feedback throughout the semester (Fallowfield et al., 2019). Although this is beneficial to student learning, it can place extra pressure on stretched academic workloads. Furthermore, while e-portfolio adoption can benefit individual subjects, it is most valuable when it is embedded at the course or program level (Hallam et al, 2010). To achieve the programmatic implementation of an e-portfolio platform, however, requires complex collaboration across a range of stakeholders. In particular, our experience shows that success in embedding e-portfolio at the program level relies upon the program director championing the new education practice (in our case, the program director of the Bachelor of Media & Communications, or BMC). Partnering with a high level and committed champion of change in academic leadership helped to secure buy-in across the teaching team, and agreement on a coherent pedagogical approach. While cross-team collaboration is an essential factor for e-portfolio adoption at the unit level, successful rollout can generate resourcing challenges for teams involved (in addition to the aforementioned academic workload). In our experience, student training and support was largely provided by professional staff at the faculty level. The onerous nature of synchronous training lead to the development and implementation of asynchronous orientation modules and a focus on ‘just-in-time’ instructional resources. Resource issues were exacerbated further due to the lack of a central e-portfolio solution within the University. Individual faculties have selected various platforms to meet their pedagogical and disciplinary needs, and supported the use of these ‘in-house’. Our faculty team was often consumed by supporting technological issues, hampering our efforts to focus on wider implementation. This piecemeal approach to support makes it difficult to affect change (Paulson, & Campbell, 2018). In order to address this issue, we drew on the successful integration of the e-portfolio in the BMC as a model of best practice and a strong case on which to secure University-level and vendor technical support for the platform. As we continue to ‘cross that chasm’, we welcome more units onto our e-portfolio platform, and seek further opportunities to build the broader collaborative networks and academic enthusiasm necessary for widespread adoption.

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