ASCILITE session

Hazel Jones
University of Southern Queensland
@hazelj59

Colin Simpson
ANU
@gamerlearner

Mathew Hillier
Monash University
Personal: @mathewhillier Transforming Assessment (e-Assessment) SIG: @transformassess

Thomas Cochrane
Auckland University of Technology
@thomcochrane

Cassandra Colvin
Charles Sturt University
@casssays

Linda Corrin
University of Melbourne
@lindacorrin

Sakinah Alhadad
Griffith University

Julie Willems
RMIT University
@Julie_Willems

Leanne Cameron
Southern Cross University
@leannecameron

Catch this session

Monday 4 December, 2.30pm – 3pm
H102

Abstract

ASCILITE supports a range of Special Interest Groups (SIGS) to provide “ASCILITE members the opportunity to work together to pursue common interests in research and practice and to create a ‘buzz’ around their focus, goals and achievements both within and beyond the ASCILITE community.” (ASCILITE, 2014). The purpose of this lighting round session will be to introduce each of the ASCILITE SIGS to delegates. SIG leaders will provide a brief overview of the purpose and focus of their respective SIGS, as well as a summary of the activities undertaken during 2017. They will also outline what their SIG considers the top 2-3 online learning/education issues/questions are for the immediate future. Following the overview presentations and a brief Q&A discussion session, attendees will have the opportunity to network in a Meet and Greet format.

About the authors

Hazel Jones

Hazel Jones is currently an Educational Designer and a PhD candidate at University of Southern Queensland Australia. Her research interests are in higher education and learning analytics, with an emphasis on support for online learning and teaching and for working with academics to provide quality learning environments for their students. She has worked in educational design and development roles at universities around Australia for over 15 years. She is currently one of the co-ordinators for the ASCILITE Learning Analytics SIG and a mentor for the ASCILITE Community Mentoring program.

Colin Simpson

Colin Simpson has worked as a Learning Technologist, Education Designer and Academic Developer since 2003 and currently works in the College of Business and Economics at ANU. He is a co-convenor of ASCILITE TEL edvisors special interest group
Colin has extensive experience in the design and development of media and interactive resources and a particular interest in game-based learning and gamification, including the use of badges. He has presented at a wide array of national and international conferences on these subjects.

He is a Certified Member of the Association of Learning Technologists (CMALT), a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA) and an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia (HERDSA). Colin is currently undertaking PhD research at the University of Sydney into the ways that TEL edvisors can better support TELT practices in Higher Education.

Mathew Hillier

Mathew is one of two co-leaders of the ASCILITE SIG for ‘e-Assessment’ and in this capacity is a co-host of the Transforming Assessment webinar series along with Prof Geoffrey Crisp.

He specialises in e-assessment and e-exams and teaches into the academic staff development program at Monash University leading the ‘technology and space’ theme. Mathew is currently the leader of the ‘Transforming Exams’ project developing a tool set for authentic, computerised, high-stakes assessment (e-Exams). The project covers 10 university partners and is funded by a half-million dollar Australian government grant.

More about Mathew at http://ta.vu/mathewhillier

Thomas Cochrane

Thomas Cochrane has established an international reputation for excellence in the scholarship of technology enhanced learning (SOTEL), with an expertise in mobile learning. Thomas has a peer-reviewed research portfolio spanning 46 journal articles, 26 book chapters, and over 120 conference proceedings (http://goo.gl/maps/YxkYP). Thomas was co-lead on the national project Learners and mobile devices (#NPF14LMD): A framework for enhanced learning and institutional change funded by New Zealand’s National Centre for Tertiary Teaching Excellence, AKO Aotearoa. This two-year six institution project broadly explored learners and mobile devices (Frielick et al., 2014), supported by a collaborative network of practice. Thomas has also developed a successful framework for lecturer professional development supported by the establishment of communities of practice, production of reflective practice publications via SOTEL, and innovations in pedagogy (Cochrane et al., 2013; Cochrane & Narayan, 2016). These communities of practice have collectively published over 50 collaborative research publications since 2011 (http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0192-6118).

Cassandra Colvin

Cassandra is currently Manager, Adaptive Learning and Teaching Services at Charles Sturt University. Prior to this appointment she was Manager, Learning Analytics, and Manager, Enhancing Student Academic Potential, an academic intervention program targeting first-year students who had been identified as academically vulnerable, both appointments at University of South Australia. Cassandra has enjoyed extensive experience in the international education industry, primarily in management roles supporting the needs of international students. In 2007, Cassandra led the team at Edith Cowan University which an Australian Office of Learning and Teaching program award in the category ‘The First-Year Experience’. Cassandra has presented widely on themes relating to learning analytics, student support, and intercultural interactions. Particular interests include learning analytics implementations and practice in higher education, intercultural relations between students, and embedding quality and continuous improvement tenets into all aspects of her work.

Linda Corrin

Dr Linda Corrin is a Senior Lecturer in Higher Education in the Williams Centre for Learning Advancement, Faculty of Business and Economics, at the University of Melbourne. In her current role, she provides support for curriculum development, delivery and assessment to staff in the faculty. Her research interests include students’ engagement with technology, learning analytics, feedback, and learning design. Currently, she is working on several large research projects exploring how learning analytics can be used to provide mean

Sakinah Alhadad

Sakinah is a psychological scientist with expertise in behavioural and cognitive science in relation to student learning and well-being, learning analytics, research methods and statistics, and academic development. She is currently the academic lead for learning analytics at the Centre for Learning Futures at Griffith University. Sakinah’s research interests sit at the research-practice nexus, with the broad goal of enhancing the practice of teaching and learning. She is particularly interested in the underlying mechanisms that support the development of expertise and flexible ways of knowing: in particular, educators developing as evidence-informed teachers; and for learners, developing as self- and socially-regulated lifelong learners. As such, her work is guided by meaningful applications and implications for educational practice in complexity. Her ultimate aim is to enable positive change for learners and professionals through transformative Higher Education practices.

Julie Willems

Dr Julie Willems holds qualifications in Nursing, the Humanities, and Education. She has worked across the Australian education sectors and, since 2004, has specialised in Higher Education. Her current position is as a Senior Lecturer in RMIT University’s Learning and Teaching Academy. Julie’s research interests include the promotion of educational and digital equity as social justice issues, and the media and technology of formal and informal learning (including social media). She was a recipient of the auDA Foundation’s national 2011 research grant for the i-Survive Project investigating the use of ‘back channel’ communications via mobile technologies and social media during Australian emergencies and disasters. Julie has a community focus and has actively served on a number of committees and boards over the course of her career, and is currently in her second term on the national Executive for Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education (ASCILITE) (2015 – ). Julie has recently been recognised as a leader in open, online and distance learning in the Australia-Pacific region (http://jl4d.org/index.php/ejl4d/article/view/207/201).

Leanne Cameron

Leanne Cameron is currently working at Southern Cross University as Lecturer, Design, Digital & Technologies Education in the School of Education. It was over 10 years ago while working with Macquarie University’s E-Learning Centre of Excellence that her work in the area of Learning Design began. She has managed three OLT research projects researching various aspects of Learning Design and she continues to research and publish in the field. Her most recent publication, ‘How learning designs, teaching methods and activities differ by discipline in Australian universities’ was included in the final volume of the Journal of Learning Design this year.