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2023: ASCILITE 2023 Conference Proceedings: People, Partnerships and Pedagogies

The proceedings of the 2023 ASCILITE Conference: People, Partnerships and Pedagogies

T. Cochrane, V. Narayan, C. Brown, K. MacCallum, E. Bone, C. Deneen, R. Vanderburg, & B. Hurren (Eds.), People, partnerships and pedagogies. Proceedings ASCILITE 2023. Christchurch

Te Pae Conference Center, Christchurch, New Zealand

December 3-6

ASCILITE2023 Conference Website https://2023conference.ascilite.org/

Published: 28 November 2023

Full Issue

ASCILITE Conference - Full Papers

  • Role of Theory in Analysing the dynamic of Self-regulated Learning process based on students’ event logs data: A scoping review

    Muhammad Hasibuan, Mark Reynolds, Sally Male, Ghulam Mubashar Hassan

    Students' capability to metacognitively regulate themselves—cognitively or behaviourally—in their learning plays a pivotal role in determining their academic performance. The dynamic aspect of Self-Regulated Learning (SRL) will be challenging to capture if it relies on perceptual data obtained from students through questionnaires and interviews and only at specific points in time. One potential alternative is to use an approach that captures student activity data in real-time throughout the learning period. Given the context-sensitivity involved in measuring SRL via event data, a solid theoretical foundation is essential in analysing patterns of SRL behaviour using event log data. This scoping review paper aims to identify and map how the empirical studies in this area consider SRL theory or models, not only when interpreting analytical results but also when designing instruction and interpreting SRL indicators from raw data. A thorough literature search was performed on various online databases, including Scopus, IEEExplorer, ProQuest, and Web of Science, to identify relevant studies. Following the PRISMA scoping review (PRISMA-ScR) as a protocol for the review, 39 studies published between 2012 and 2023 were included. This study found limited studies incorporating SRL theory in every analysis stage, from designing instruction to preprocessing event data and interpreting analytical models. This study also highlighted the importance of including contextual and theoretical factors when assessing self-regulatory behavioural patterns.

  • Dialogic feedback in online teaching: Implications for teacher education

    Ana Hibert, Michael Phillips, Dragan Gaševic, Nataša Pantic, Justine MacLean, Yi-Shan Tsai

    Effective feedback requires a dynamic two-way process in which both teachers and students engage actively in dialogue. Online teaching has been widely adopted in education since COVID-19 pandemic; yet limited studies have explored the implications for dialogic feedback. This paper presents a study that seeks to identify challenges that teachers face when facilitating dialogic feedback in online teaching and explore how different feedback modes may enhance or hinder dialogic feedback. Based on findings of interviews with 16 in-service and pre-service teachers from the UK and Australia, we suggest that teacher education needs to highlight the development of student feedback literacy, the relational aspect of feedback, and pedagogical strategies to creative use of learning technologies for feedback.

  • Mentoring as complementary support for learner engagement: Student perspectives on onboarding interventions

    Lalitha Jonnavithula, John Y. H. Bai

    Student engagement is linked to student success and shaped by the availability of student support through their academic journeys. Improving engagement with adequate support strategies is a continuous challenge for open and distance learning (ODL) institutions. However, there is limited understanding of how student engagement experience can be influenced by a support team outside the instructional context of faculty presence. In 2020, the Open Polytechnic (OP) Te P?kenga, a specialist provider of open distance education in New Zealand, implemented a three-tiered framework for student support. This system includes technology-supported mentoring interventions that are aligned to, and separate from, academic faculty support; the mentoring system gives students access to consistent engagement opportunities during their course journeys. The current project examines how students perceived these mentoring interventions, and this paper specifically examines the perceptions of newly enrolled online students on their experiences of the mentoring interventions during onboarding. Students in two introductory level block courses participated in an online, qualitative survey and their responses were thematically analysed following a deductive approach. Key themes in the data were related to the concepts of transactional presence and emotional engagement. These findings demonstrate the value of complementary non-academic support during student onboarding.

  • Identifying the components of foundational Artificial Intelligence (AI) literacy - Early results from a Delphi study

    Kathryn MacCallum, David Parsons, Mahsa Mohaghegh

    This article provides some initial results from the first phase of a Delphi study to identify the critical components of an Artificial Intelligence (AI) literacy curriculum. This article explores the study results that address a four-level capability model, but only the lowest level of this model. The Delphi panel comprised 17 experts in AI, and the first round of the study used a survey to gather the experts' responses in three areas that were based on previous literature - knowledge (and concepts) of AI, skills related to AI, and understanding AI in context. A structured thematic analysis revealed several themes under these categories. For foundational knowledge and concepts, it was determined that three areas were needed, namely 1) what is AI? 2) applications of AI, and 3) AI technologies. Skills were divided into cognitive and technical skills, with cognitive skills further divided into 21st-century and applied skills. Understandings comprised social issues, risks, and debates. The repeated ideas that formed these themes gave rich insights into how an AI literacy curriculum might be structured and provided a firm foundation for subsequent rounds of the study, which will involve further iteration and consolidation of these ideas.

  • Exploring business students’ views of the use of generative AI in assignment writing: An examination of generative AI use through students’ own ethical perspectives

    Duncan Murray, Karen Williams

    The rise of generative AI, particularly over the past few years, has raised notable issues about its use. This has been possibly most pronounced in academia, where there has been strong debate on the potential value of generative AI to augment learning outcomes versus the potential for academic dishonesty and devalued education. Whilst some papers have looked at students’ perspectives on the use of generative AI, there has been less focus exploring through what ethical perspectives or frames students see using generative AI in their tertiary education. We interviewed and conducted focus groups and interviews with students enrolled in an Australian university business school, to explore the ethical frames through which they saw the use of generative AI. Focussing on three specific perspectives: Deontological, Consequentialism and Virtue Ethics, it emerged that no single perspective dominated, with students having a complex mix and latticework of ethical perspectives on its use, even within the same individual. We explore some potential implications for practice that emerged from the data, one of which is the role of the academic as moral exemplar.

  • Collaborative approach in the programme design and development – A case study in a Postgraduate Certificate in Computer and Information Sciences

    Nhung Nguyen, Nawal Chanane, Maryam Doborjeh, Wei Qi Yan, Akbar Ghobakhlou, Parma Nand, Benjamin Kehrwald, Roopak Sinha

    Pandemics and natural disasters and advancements in technologies like generative AI require universities to stay nimble and responsive to adjust at short notice. This paper investigates collaboration across disciplines and departments within a university in designing and developing courses to respond to the rapidly changing context in higher education during the early phase of COVID-19 pandemic. More specifically, in this paper we reflect on a collaborative approach in programme design and development of the online Postgraduate Certificate (PGCert) in Computer and Information Sciences Programme. Using a qualitative research approach and adopting a case study methodology, this paper outlines the nature of collaboration, the planned data collection methods, and preliminary findings. This work demonstrates the benefits of collaborative approaches, including increased efficiency through teamwork, a balanced distribution of individual and collaborative tasks for staff, and the creation of a supportive and motivating social environment.

  • AI-powered peer review process: An approach to enhance computer science students’ engagement with code review in industry-based subjects

    Eduardo Oliveira, Shannon Rios, Zhuoxuan Jiang

    Code review is a common type of peer review in Computer Science (CS) education. It’s a peer review process that involves CS students other than the original author examining source code and is widely acknowledged as an effective method for reducing software errors and enhancing the overall quality of software projects. While code review is an essential skill for CS students, they often feel uncomfortable to share their work or to provide feedback to peers due to concerns related to coding experience, validity, reliability, bias, and fairness. An automated code review process could offer students the potential to access timely, consistent, and independent feedback about their coding artifacts. We investigated the use of generative Artificial Intelligence (genAI) to automate a peer review process to enhance CS students’ engagement with code review in an industry-based subject in the School of Computing and Information System, University of Melbourne. Moreover, we evaluated the effectiveness of genAI at performing checklist-based assessments of code. A total of 80 CS students performed over 36 reviews in two different weeks. We found our genAI-powered reviewing process significantly increased students’ engagement in code review and, could also identify a larger number of code issues in short times, leading to more fixes. These results suggest that our approach could be successfully used in code reviews, potentially helping to address issues related to peer review in higher education settings.

  • Authorship Verification in software engineering education: Forget ChatGPT and focus on students' academic writing profiles

    Shannon Rios, Yu Zhang, Eduardo Oliveira

    The prevalence of academic misconduct, specifically contract cheating, is a rising concern in higher education institutions globally. Among the recent advancements, Generative Artificial Intelligence (genAI) has exacerbated the situation by offering authentically generated writings, making detection through traditional plagiarism tools ineffective. This paper explores the development and application of students' academic writing profiles, using a combination of word embedding (Word2Vec) and stylistic feature extraction techniques. By leveraging a Siamese neural network, our method focuses on recognising distinctive writing styles, a concept rooted in Authorship Verification (AV). Our approach's efficacy evaluates favourably against other AV methods and is tested against AI-generated texts deliberately designed to mimic student writing. The study emphasises the importance of understanding individual academic writing styles to identify outsourcing or AI-generated work effectively.

  • Sustainable practices in education: Virtual Labs

    Maryam Sharifkhani, Jonathan Davidson, Kathryn MacCallum, Jan Evans-Freeman, Cheryl Brown, Chris Bullsmith, Brodwyne Richards

    The adoption of Virtual Labs (VLs) as a pedagogical tool in higher education is rapidly increasing, especially with the recent shift towards remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. VLs offer a digital alternative to traditional laboratory settings, employing computer graphics, simulations, and interactive models to create immersive and interactive learning experiences. While the pedagogical benefits of VLs are well-established, their potential contribution to sustainability within Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) remains ambiguous. This paper aims to address this ambiguity by conducting a literature review to examine the sustainability implications of adopting VLs in HEIs. This literature review reveals that VLs have the potential to enhance sustainability in HEIs across multiple dimensions. However, the literature highlights challenges and limitations associated with implementing VLs despite the positive indications. These include issues related to usability, technical challenges, and the potential costs associated with the adoption of VLs. This literature review suggests the need for further research on the adoption of VLs in HEIs, specifically in relation to achieving the SDGs. It emphasises the importance of considering pedagogical aspects and implementing innovative teaching practices to maximise the long-term effectiveness of VLs. By shedding light on the intersection of VLs and sustainability in HEIs, this research contributes to a broader understanding of how adoption of VLs, can foster a stronger connection between people, the environment, and pedagogy, creating the way for a more sustainable and inclusive future of education.

  • Factors impacting the ability of ‘EdAdvisors’ to support and enhance technology-enhanced learning and teaching in Australian Higher Education

    Colin Simpson

    Technology-enhanced learning and teaching practice in Higher Education is facilitated in different ways by ‘Third Space’ support staff including Learning Designers, Education Technologists and Academic Developers, broadly defined as ‘EdAdvisors’ – educator/advisors. EdAdvisors offer rich experience and expertise across both pedagogy and technology can be hampered by workplace factors that diminish their ability to have meaningful impact. The work that EdAdvisors do is increasingly represented in existing research but there less is known of the barriers to their practice, particularly across different role-types. This doctoral research uses a Practice Theory lens and mixed methods to examine the complex web of factors in Australian Higher Education that shape the practices of EdAdvisors, including cultural, epistemic, material, organisational and relational, in an attempt to identify problems and suggest solutions. One significant problem is that EdAdvisor roles are often poorly defined. This work adds clarity to the understanding of these roles by comparing core activities and knowledge areas associated with them and using this analysis to find distinguishing characteristics and areas of overlap. It contributes to deeper understanding of the ways that teaching is and should be supported in Australian Higher Education. Feedback is sought on the theoretical lenses and methodology

  • Examining students’ behavioural engagement in lecture videos with and without embedded quizzes in an online course.

    Niharika Singh, Seyum Getenet, Eseta Tualaulelei

    This study reports part of a larger study that explores three technologies – Padlet, Panopto videos and Google Docs – and their effectiveness in enhancing university students’ engagement in online learning. The current paper explores the role of interactive quizzes embedded in recorded lectures in enhancing student engagement in higher education focused on behaviour engagement. Panopto video analytics and a survey were used as a source of data. Descriptive statistics were used to analyse the data, including percentage and frequency. The analyses focused on 59 university students’ behavioural engagement in the recorded videos with and without embedded quizzes in relation to their video dropout, average viewing time, completion rate and frequency of viewing. The paper highlights the benefits of incorporating interactive quizzes within lecture videos, including increased motivation, engagement, and academic performance. However, this study also shows some interesting results on students’ behavioural engagement when it comes to learning online. Overall, findings suggest that the incorporation of quizzes in lecture videos can be an effective tool for increasing student engagement and improving learning outcomes in online courses. Implications for online course design and future research are discussed.

  • Understanding the impact of ChatGPT in education: Exploratory study on students’ attitudes, perception and ethics

    Chee Ling Thong, Russell Butson, Lim WeiLee

    With the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in educational settings, particularly the integration of tools like ChatGPT, research on the impact of ChatGPT in education becomes a critical and timely endeavor, especially when it includes insights from students rather than just teachers. This exploratory study aims to examine students’ attitudes, perceptions, and ethical concerns towards AI integration in learning environments by directly engaging 60 students from diverse geographical regions and educational background. The sample includes students from urban higher education and suburban high school. The study is founded on a quantitative research design and cross-sectional survey methodology. The findings reveal a clear digital divide in AI usage, with urban students demonstrating more engagement with ChatGPT for educational purposes than their suburban counterparts, thereby unveiling an underlying disparity in technological access. Ambiguity prevails among students about distinct functionalities and benefits of AI language models like ChatGPT, hinting at the need for clearer elucidation of AI’s unique capabilities. Ethical concerns also emerge, especially regarding AI accuracy and the potential for misuse leading to a decline in critical thinking skills. However, despite these challenges, students generally express optimism about the future refinement and widespread application of ChatGPT. In conclusion, this study underscores the importance of promoting digital inclusivity, establishing clear ethical guidelines, and striving for continuous improvements in AI accuracy, all while maintaining student-centric approach. Future direction suggests a focus on enhancing digital inclusivity, ethical considerations, AI accuracy and educational strategies around unique functionalities of AI tools.

  • Building a model for transmedia learning: Engaging work integrated learning students

    Bridget Tombleson

    This paper presents insights from an ongoing doctoral research project into developing a model for transmedia learning for work integrated learning in higher education. Transmedia learning is defined as a way to learn across different platforms, developing the students’ holistic understanding of the topic through collaborative learning, but also developing their own transmedia skills as a part of the process. In this way learning is a social process even though students may not be in a face-to-face classroom environment, as is the case with work integrated learning. The research focuses on developing a model for student learning that is based on co-creation and collaboration, across a range of learning platforms. The study specifically investigates learning across learning management systems, some social media platforms, and the use of Massive Open Online Courses. Five key areas are identified for transmedia learning including informal learning, participatory culture, transmedia play, transmedia skills, and connectedness. This paper offers understanding of the research approach and highlights areas of study currently being researched.

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