Video: Celebrating our university’s achievement on digital learning thus far
Whether you’re a tech-head, tech-phobe or something in-between, teaching through the pandemic has been unlike anything you’ve ever grappled with. In an online tutorial where everyone's cameras and mics are off, the silence after you ask a question is deafening. Students reach out with issues you have no idea how to solve – and yet you’re the only person who can. Certain videos and web sites won’t work for students overseas, so you have to improvise creative solutions. Exams and other assessments need to be completely redesigned. To assist the university’s teaching community through these changes, within the Educational Delivery Services (EDS) team we are asking ourselves: what can we do better?
Between 2017 and 2020, our team’s focus has been the Digital Uplift Initiative. Reflecting on the journey we have taken; we would like to celebrate the achievements accomplished through the partnership with over 320 teaching staff. The thousands of hours put into making over 300 courses teachable online has made learning more accessible and relatable for students, tying activities and assessment with real workplace skills and using technology to bring course content alive. As Digital Uplift comes to an end, we recognise the value of these outcomes and the relationships forged with faculties and schools. From this, we then paved our priorities for the next stage.
Our new offering
Using the experience and know-how our team has accumulated over the past 3 years, we are offering educational solutions to the university community on issues encountered when teaching in the digital space. Do you need to move your paper test online? Do you need guidance on assessing students’ presentations online? Maybe you want to record and edit your own podcasts or understand the educational values of tool kits available to you. Perhaps you aim to help students feel more connected and supported. Whatever your educational goals, reach out to us through the Educational Solutions Consultation form. This is also one of our latest collaborations with faculties.
Another venture the EDS team is partaking in is identifying a university-wide digital assessment solution. This is a key gap identified during the university’s rapid move to teaching online in Term 1. Across Terms 2 and 3, EDS will assist in running a pilot on the Inspera platform across nominated courses to learn how it may potentially fulfill the university’s assessment needs. This is carried out in collaboration with ETS, IT, and Student Services and Systems teams. One of our team’s priorities is collecting information across different use cases to capture the overall picture of what our university’s assessment looks like and where the piloted platform stands in meeting our requirements. More communication and updates will come your way on this front, so stay tuned!
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The EDS team would like to extend their thanks to all the academics who contributed their stories and apologies for not being able to include all in the final version: Dr Thomas Britz, Dr Anne Galea, Professor Julien Epps, Dr Peta Hay, A.Prof Jayashri Ravishankar, Dr Trevor Lewis, Dr Bridget Haire, Dr Sarah Grundy, Dr Shane Keating and Dr Greg Smith.