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2021: ASCILITE 2021 Conference Proceedings: Back to the Future

The 2021 ASCILITE annual conference was hosted by the University of New England, 29th November to 1st December.

Editors: S. Gregory, S. Warburton, and M. Schier

Published: 29 November 2021

ASCILITE Conference - Concise Papers

  • Use of gamification to enhance curiosity and engagement through feedback strategies

    Anupam Makhija, Meena Jha, Deborah Richards, Ayse Bilgin

    Curiosity is a significant educational component behind human learning and is vital for a learner to sustain motivation and engagement in both face-to-face and online learning environments. Positive feedback has the potential to support learning by enhancing competence, confidence, and curiosity. Informative feedback at the right time is the sought-after goal in traditional classrooms and is equally important for the learning design within a digital educational environment. Individual differences such as personality, gender, learning style, and curiosity trait can play a crucial role in how feedback is received and acquired knowledge is demonstrated in a different context by a learner. This paper proposes to exploit the benefits of positive feedback in a statistics game by establishing a connection between feedback and curiosity through the lens of the self- determination theory of motivation. It presents a work-in-progress psychological theory-based conceptual framework to foster curiosity by means of game-based learning and gamification approaches.

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  • Capability development by educational technology

    Cedomir Gladovic

    The capability to identify and make a judgement about the quality of own and work of others is known as evaluative judgement. Such capability is crucial for learners and their learning trajectories, allowing them to become job-ready graduates and life-long learners. The overall concept is newly named but existed in different forms and shapes in the literature. There is sporadic literature investigation of evaluative judgement development by educational technology. Self-assessment, peer-assessment and portfolios in the online learning environment bring various educational values and benefits. Each of these pedagogical activities can contribute to the development of evaluative judgement in an online environment enhanced by educational technology. The primary purpose of this paper is to expand the discussion about the development of evaluative judgement using educational technology. This paper provides some rationale for the inclusion of selected pedagogical activities in the curriculum and actively using them in student- centred education.

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  • A proposal to measure the impact of automated response systems on meeting student learning outcomes

    Josiah Koh, Michael Cowling, Meena Jha, Kwong Nui Sim

    With the advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AI), much has been made of the use of AI in education. Central to that is the idea of an Automated Response System (ARS). Current adoption of ARS’s in education has been mainly in the realm of administrative tasks but is likely to move into the support of teaching. ARS can be used as a supplement for teaching as it provides instant feedback, and 24/7 support. Having a highly accessible, 24/7 ARS can help relieve some of the burdens placed on teachers, especially in a post COVID-19 environment, where teachers expect work to intensify, rather than simplify. In this paper we present a work-in-progress that proposes what features an ARS for education should have, how these would be useful and how these features help teachers assist students meet their learning outcomes in a holistic manner.

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  • Creating presence, currency and connection in digital learning with video blogs

    APUBS Administrator, Joanne Elliott, Chie Adachi

    There is a substantial body of work arguing that sense of belonging, connection and interaction is a critical element for students to persist and succeed in learning online. However online students frequently report feeling isolated and disconnected from teachers, peers, and the institution. This paper explores the use of regular, informal video messages to facilitate these connections in a fully online course We argue that such videos can build teacher presence, provide opportunities for sharing feedback, guidance, emerging developments and professional insights, and contribute to a dynamic and engaging learning environment. We share preliminary feedback and reflections on the use of such videos and discuss the next steps in measuring the impact of these videos on student learning and satisfaction.

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  • Building a culture of innovation in learning and teaching technologies through an innovators group

    Birgit Loch, Belinda Thompson, Christopher Bridge, Dell Horey, Brianna Julien, Julia Agolli

    Innovation was seen as crucial for universities even before the COVID-19 global pandemic, to widen participation within massification strategies, to deliver graduates that meet the needs of economies and to justify increased fees in response to reduced government funding. Innovation will become increasingly important as universities contribute to the post-pandemic recovery of their communities and nations and need to find new avenues for research funding with less reliance on governments. In this paper, we describe our first steps towards developing a culture of innovation in learning and teaching across science, health, and engineering disciplines by bringing together and empowering a group of mostly junior academics. We describe achievements of this group, indicate key success factors, and discuss next steps.

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  • Mobile learning and socially constructed blended learning through the lens of Activity Theory

    Vickel Narayan, Thomas Cochrane, Stephen Aiello, James Birt, Mehrasa Alizadeh, Neil Cowie, Paul Goldacre, David Sinfield, Todd Stretton, Tom Worthington, Chris Deneen, Michael Cowling

    The pandemic has drastically changed the education landscape. The pedagogical practices, policies and procedures ingrained and refined over many years were suddenly rendered less effective. Overnight, new practices, policies and procedures had to be drafted to support teaching and learning. More than a year on, educators have found a new home, new pedagogies and practices have been refined and continue to be, policies and procedures are agile to support a volatile environment academia dwells in during the pandemic era. Building upon the work the Mobile Learning Special Interest Group (MLSIG) presented last year at the conference, we investigate the role mobile learning is and could play in emerging pandemic pedagogies. Eight vignettes are presented from universities around the world that are analysed using Activity Theory to understand the role of mobile devices and social tools for developing blended synchronous learning (BSL) and HyFlex learning.

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  • Lines of thought: The emergence of meaning through collaborations and remix

    Sarah Honeychurch, Wendy Taleo

    In this report on a specialised topic of remix and emergent learning we will demonstrate an open education project that emerged from the future. Using open and inclusive practices, a global group of educators engaged in some serious fun to collaborate and share digital and physical artefacts based on a poem. The poem itself was collaboratively created using open, online software, and allowed for serendipitous participation without the need to learn new skills. The set of work that was and is being created is beautiful, diverse, and far reaching. We discuss the practices of remix that this collaboration uses and show how these seemingly trivial experiences both nurture well- being, lead to serious learning, and have wide applicability in other, more formal, learning contexts.

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  • Learning to research in distance mode: Technologies for building higher degree research community online

    Huw Nolan, Adele Nye, Nikki Rumpca, Ariella Van Luyn

    Higher Degree Researchers (HDRs) in Australia tertiary education programs must achieve mastery of complex skills, theories, and concepts. Non-traditional HDRs, especially those enrolled part time and remotely, face barriers to achieving these outcomes. This concise paper uses the case study of a regional university in Australia to investigate the theoretical underpinnings of technology use to promote HDR communities of learning, especially for part time and remote researchers.

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  • Exploring students’ experience with and perceptions towards elearning in an online public health module

    Charlene Goh, Kit Yung Tan, Andre Matthias Müller

    Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, universities in Singapore had to shift from traditional face-to- face learning to eLearning. We explored students’ experiences with and perceptions towards eLearning in the context of a public health module about physical activity. The module had a mixture of asynchronous lectures and live Zoom tutorials. We conducted nine in-depth interviews with students from the module. Students felt that the onus was primarily on the instructors to lead lessons and engage students. As such, they often took a backseat during online classes and rarely participated in class discussions. The eLearning environment enhanced their ability to be passive as they could be largely anonymous. The eLearning environment also made it easy to lose focus and mentally disconnect during lessons. Finally, students spoke about the lack of connection to classmates which impacted their learning efforts. To alleviate this and promote social engagement and connection, check-in polls, movement breaks, and breakout room discussions can be implemented.

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  • Designing hybrid and online capstone experiences for accounting students

    Christine Contessotto, Edwin KiaYang Lim, Harsh Suri

    In this paper, we share insights from our experience of harnessing technologies to innovatively design a capstone experience for large cohorts of accounting students in hybrid and online environments, informed by insights from key stakeholder consultations and relevant research. To support scaffolded development of professional skills and identity in a short span of eleven weeks, we designed a coherent suite of experiential learning and assessment activities based on contemporary events, an Enterprise Resource Planning business simulation, employability skills training and authentic case studies. Consistently high student evaluations of this unit suggest that our students find this experience valuable. Student responses to the Graduate Attribute Scale in the Graduate Outcomes Survey have shown improvement following the introduction of the capstone unit.

    Read article: Designing hybrid and online capstone experiences for accounting students

  • Embedding the development of graduate qualities of international postgraduate IT students in the disciplinary curriculum

    Ping Yu, Siyu Qian, Zhenyu Zhang, Lina Markauskaite, Jun Shen, Ting Song

    There has been a steady increase in international students pursuing postgraduate coursework education in English speaking countries. Like first-year undergraduate students, these international students need assistance transitioning into the new educational environment and preparing for self-directed, collaborative learning throughout their careers. Drawing on the social constructivist pedagogical approaches, we developed learning tasks that foster self-regulation and collaboration among postgraduate coursework IT students, aligning these tasks with the learning outcomes of the subject Information Design and Content Management. This paper presents the rationale and method for the design of the learning tasks, and how these learning tasks to not only align with the subject learning outcomes but also facilitate self-regulation. A study involving pre- and post-subject surveys and interviews with 133 subject students will provide us with further insights into the effectiveness of the learning task design and the areas for improvement.

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  • Providing equitable education through personalised adaptive learning and assessment

    Punithavathy Palanisamy, Shamini Thilarajah, Zihui Chen

    Educators around the globe are striving to promote equity in their classrooms by adopting adaptive learning systems to provide customised learning resources and tools to help the learners achieve mastery at their own pace. This personalised approach goes a long way in closing the divide between students' socioeconomic status and special needs. Over the years, the advancement in technology offers more sophisticated adaptive technologies. It aggregates data such as students' prior knowledge and academic performances to predict and better adapt the learning paths. This paper presents the evaluation of adaptive technologies for personalised learning and the vision of a Personalised Adaptive Learning and Assessment (PALAS) system for Higher Education. This vision could be an imperative piece supporting Singapore's ‘National AI Strategy’, set to focus on personalised education through adaptive learning and assessment.

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  • Increasing student grades in large online subjects: Combining tutorial support with technology

    Kelly Linden, Neil Van Der Ploeg, Ben Hicks, Kirsten Locke

    Three large first-year undergraduate subjects with 240-517 enrolled students were selected to participate in this pilot study. A meeting scheduling tool was embedded in the learning management system and thirty-minute, one-on-one tutorial sessions were available to students in the 2 weeks leading up to the due date of at least one large written task. Thirty one percent (31%) of enrolled students attended at least one appointment with a tutor. There was no difference in the average assessment mark that students obtained before the first tutorial was offered between those who attended a tutorial session for a later assessment item and those who did not. There was a significant increase in the average cumulative grade (10%, p<0.05) of students who attended a tutorial. The novel use of the calendar booking tool combined with online meeting technology provides a simple and convenient method to provide personalised feedback to a large cohort of students.

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Showing 27–39 of 50 articles