Awards 2004

The annual ascilite awards, comprising 'ascilites' and the President's Award, are designed to reward leaders in the use of electronic technologies in teaching and learning in tertiary education. Each year at the ascilite conference these awards recognize exemplary product design and development in this area.

All entries are judged on their merits in terms of the above over-arching goal and the following criteria:

• Appropriateness for the target audience
  
• Appropriateness and effectiveness of the Learning Design
  
• Significance/impact on teaching practice and/or learning outcomes
  
• Creativity and Innovation
  
• Evidence of effectiveness (Evaluation)
  
• Overall quality
  

As in past years the standard of entries was very high. Of the 13 submitted, 7 were listed as finalists.

Use the links to see further details on each of these.

Online Lectures: Increasing active learning in Political Studies. (Higher Education Development Centre - University of Otago)
Contact: Michael Crawford (Michael.crawford@stonebow.otago.ac.nz)

Japanese Post-modern Fashion Design. (Flexible Learning and Access Services - Griffith University)
Contact: Anthea Groessler (a.groessler@griffith.edu.au)

The Virtual Chemistry Laboratory. (Charles Sturt University)
Contact: Barney Dalgarno (bdalgarno@csu.edu.au)

Road Risks - Your Choice (emlab - University of Wollongong)
Contact: Rob Wright (rwrigth@uow.edu.au)

The Virtual Ward. (Faculty of Medicine, Nursing & Health Sciences - Monash University)
Contact: Debra Kiegaldie (Debbie.kiegaldie@med.monash.edu.au)

Post Graduate Essentials. (TELARS - University of Melbourne)
Contact: Claire Brooks (c.brooks@unimelb.edu.au)

The Group Assessment Tool. (Flexible Learning and Access Services - Griffith University)
Contact: Gillian Collom (g.collom@griffith.edu.au)

Online Lectures: Increasing active learning in Political Studies

The aim of this project was to shift students from passively attending lectures and gaining only a rudimentary understanding of course content, to actively attending seminar sessions, and engaging with course material and resources by providing a range of online resources, centred around 'online lectures', which were a fundamental and compulsory preparation for the face to face sessions that followed.

Twelve 'online lectures' were produced, which, with companion resources (including streaming video) encouraged deep learning behaviours, where the students make sense of the information for them selves and are able to participate meaningfully in the seminars.

The project provides a range of online resources, both of a theoretical and historical/illustrative nature to support students new to the topic and at the same time provides more advanced materials for students with a political studies background.

Japanese Post-modern Fashion Design

This CD-ROM highlights the unequivocal impact that three Japanese postmodernist fashion designers - Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo (Comme des Garcons) have had on western dress in the 1980s and 1990s and shows why their work has influenced and inspired artists and designers globally.

It defines the new directions and meanings inherent in postmodern fashion and reiterates the visual and aesthetic exchange in art and design that has existed for centuries between the east and the west.

This resource provides the student of art, fashion and textile studies with in-depth research material complemented with over 300 visual images which illustrate the text. The work of the three key contemporary designers is placed within an aesthetic, historical, social and cultural context.

The Virtual Chemistry Laboratory

ascilite Award winner

The virtual chemistry laboratory has been developed to help undergraduate chemistry students at Charles Sturt University (CSU) become familiar with the laboratory, apparatus and procedures prior to their first laboratory session.

A need was recognised for a resource that helps students to feel more confident and less anxious as they approach their laboratory sessions.

It is an accurate 3D model of the Charles Sturt University Wagga Wagga undergraduate teaching laboratory and provides an environment where students can freely explore, collect and assemble items of apparatus, and find out information about laboratory procedures and apparatus.


ascilite Award winner

Winner: President's Award

Road Risks - Your Choice is the first comprehensive road safety education resource in NSW targeting students in Years 7 and 8 and was developed by the University of Wollongong 's emlab (educational media laboratory).

The package is designed to help high school students think more about safer behaviour on the road.

The package contains interactive CD-ROMs, video, and activities which all link to the mandatory Personal Development, Health and Physical Education Syllabus, years 7-10.

Teachers are able to choose the best activities to suit the needs of their students who are able to participate in activities such as investigating road safety scenarios from multiple perspectives, an engaging quiz-style game on road safety and the creation of comic strips to help the characters act out a story-line safely.

The structure of the resource allows students to make choices and decisions that are relevant to their experience and environment. A conscious attempt has been made to design environments and scenarios that hold relevance to both genders and a range of cultural backgrounds.

Throughout the resource students are able to control the pace and direction of the activities and bring their own experience into play. Most activities have been designed to actively involve the student in supported investigation of road safety issues and scenarios.

The Virtual Ward

The Virtual Ward is a series of innovative web-based multimedia case studies that are designed to facilitate the learning of science by undergraduate nursing students. The series of twelve (12) case studies, arranged in three (3) sequences known as Virtual Ward 1, 2 and 3, were developed by the collaborative efforts of a team of science and nursing academics. The Virtual Ward series creates a virtual, realistic clinical experience for nursing students that appears to promote the meaningful learning of human physiology and pathophysiology.

The Virtual Ward is designed to deliver clinical case study materials in three (3) health science units over the second and third years of an undergraduate nursing curriculum at Monash University . The web delivery of The Virtual Ward allows a flexible study mode that encourages student-centred teaching and learning.

The learning design is based on the theory that the learning task has to be meaningful, in the sense that it could be related to the existing knowledge of the learner and, secondly, that the learner must have the motivation to relate the new material to what they already know.

The Virtual Ward experience creates a meaningful learning task by encouraging the learner to make connections between the science concepts already learnt and the clinical information presented in the cases. The clinical scenarios promote the motivation to link new and existing knowledge because the learner can associate the two through previous clinical experiences or anticipated future experiences in the health-care environment.

Post Graduate Essentials

ascilite Award winner

Postgraduate Essentials is an on-line academic course aimed at supporting research students settle into their PhD candidature, develop their understanding of the nature and expectations of research, and equipping them with the academic and management skills essential for a successful start and beyond.

The 12 week course comprises Web pages, downloadable checklists, videos, quizzes, polls, interactive tutorials and on-line communication tools. It addresses the learning needs of students from diverse backgrounds, and through ICT develops a supportive community of peers and facilitates interaction with university advisers.

The course provides an integrated transition program for commencing PhD students by ensuring students identify and complete key tasks in the first year of candidature and promoting and ongoing peer support network.

The Group Assessment Tool

ascilite Award winner

The Group Assessment Tool (GAT) allows online peer and self-assessment of groups that interact through a discussion board and, in some cohorts, face to face.

Where students are required to engage in significant levels of group activity, there is potential for dissatisfaction about the allocation of marks for the group unless special assessment features are added.

The formal structure of the group assessment criteria provides students with opportunities to develop collaborative skills, with feedback from peers, and clearly identifies the attributes that are valued.

For a large group of students, the paper-based data collection required to capture and moderate the ranking of students is prohibitive. While the online task involves considerable time to monitor group progress in the discussion board, the assessment task is made relatively simple by using this database tool.

The Group Assessment Tool provides a firm basis for differential allocation of marks when group tasks comprise a substantial component of the course workload, and it encourages tertiary students to examine first-hand the mechanics of group assessment.

GAT is now designed for generic use, and we recognize that it needs careful analysis of the purpose and implementation in new courses to ensure its appropriate use as an assessment tool.