IMS GLC Learning Impact Awards
Australian Regional Finals

Showcase and judging: Early evening of 11 March 2010
Awards ceremony: Lunchtime 12 March 2010

The Technology in Education Open Forum will include a showcase and judging of the Australian Regional Finals of the IMS Global Learning Consortium Learning Impact Awards (LIA). The Learning Impact Awards and Recognition Program recognizes outstanding applications of technology that address the most significant challenges facing education. The awards are unique for their recognition of the use of technology in context. The top Australian finalists will receive support to attend the international IMS GLC Learning Impact Awards in Long Beach, California from 17-20 May 2010.

Winners

Congratulations to all Learning Impact Award winners.

The following finalists will now represent Australia in the 2010 Global Learning Impact Awards to be held in Long Beach, California:

A Peoples' Choice Award was determined by Delegates who attended the IDEA10 series of events and voted for their favourite LIA entries during the LIA 'speed dating' event:

Two Encouragement Awards were also given out to entries that demonstrated a high level of quality in addressing technology challenges facing education:

Judging

Judging were carried out by five expert judges and criteria was based on:
  • Access
  • Affordability
  • Quality
  • Adoption
  • Accountability
  • Organisational learning
  • Interoperability
  • Innovation
 Judges:

Dr. Rob Abel - IMS Global Learning Consortium

Deborah Hamilton - Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR)

Dr. Kathryn Moyle - University of Canberra

Rodney Spark - e-Works

Ross Treadwell - Education Works Department of Education and Children's Services (DECS), South Australia

Full judging criteria available at: http://www.imsglobal.org/learningimpact2010/awards.html

Finalists

We would like to congratulate the 9 successful finalists as follows:

  1. University of South Australia: Improving learning outcomes in a diverse student population
  2. Education Services Australia: Thesaurus-enhanced vocabulary switching and faceted search in an education portal
  3. Western Sydney Institute of TAFE: Mobilae - mobile learning, assessment and evidence gathering
  4. Education Services Australia: Personal / Professional learning network
  5. Tasmanian Polytechnic and Skills Institute: Mobile Assessment and Online Recognition using QTI solutions
  6. University of Southern Queensland: Adoption of Tablet and screencasting technologies for multi-modal education at the University of Southern Queensland
  7. WestOne Services: WestOne Resource Development Framework
  8. Studentnet: Nextmail advanced collaboration
  9. eMarking Assistant and the University of Southern Queensland: eMarking Assistant: helping teachers provide quality feedback on electronic assignments and use electronic marking rubrics

Improving learning outcomes in a diverse student population

Organisation: University of South Australia
Contact: Sheila Scutter
Email: Sheila.Scutter@unisa.edu.au

Presentation: ppt icon (88 KB)

The Livescribe Pulse Smartpen is a pen with a digital recorder incorporated within it. However, it has the added capacity of linking the text which is being written with the audio recording. This allows replay of what was being said at the time that the text was being written, allowing for refinement and addition of notes taken at the time. In addition, the SmartPen links via a USB cable with a personal computer, enabling a digital record of text and audio. If required, software is available that converts the written work into an editable word document. The electronic notes can be indexed, searched for keywords, shared with colleagues or translated into another language.

This project will explore the possible applications of the Livescribe Pulse Smartpen to enhance student engagement and improve learning outcomes in a variety of learning settings, including lectures, tutorials and field placements. A particular emphasis will be investigating the usefulness of this tool for students from a non English speaking background, students with a disability or other special needs. In addition, possible application for students with limited effective note-taking skills or who are making poor progress in their studies will be investigated. The project will also investigate the capacity of the Smartpen to assist staff with note-taking in meetings, and teaching and research activities.

Thesaurus-enhanced vocabulary switching and faceted search in an education portal

Organisation: Education Services Australia
Contact: Les Kneebone
Email: les.kneebone@thelearningfederation.edu.au

Presentation: ppt icon (0.55 MB)

The Schools Online Thesaurus (ScOT) provides a controlled vocabulary of terms used in Australian and New Zealand schools. It encompasses all subject areas as well as terms describing educational and administrative processes.

ScOT is implemented in Scootle, an education portal housing digital learning resources. ScOT enhances search and browse, improving discovery of resources.

Second Runner-up - Mobilae - mobile learning, assessment and evidence gathering

Organisation: Western Sydney Institute of TAFE
Contact: Evan Bailey
Email: evan.bailey@det.nsw.edu.au

Presentation: http://webconf.det.nsw.edu.au/mobilae/

Mobilae is a prototype system built using open-source software components, which attempts to overcome some of the issues with the use of mobile devices learning and assessment.

Mobilae provides the following features:

First Runner-up & Peoples' Choice Award - Personal / Professional learning network

Organisation: Education Services Australia
Contact: Jerry Leeson
Email: jleeson@educationau.edu.au

Presentation: ppt icon (5.1 MB)

FusED allows educators and learners to create an online networking and profile space within their personal learning environment. Some of its uses include:

Most importantly, it allows for integration of content and services from other parts of the Web to create a highly personalised learning environment. All content created by users is owned by them and can be exported at any time. Interoperability of content and services is at the core of the design of FusED.

Winner - Mobile Assessment and Online Recognition using QTI solutions

Organisation: Tasmanian Polytechnic and Skills Institute
Contact: Peter Higgs
Email: Peter.higgs@polytechnic.tas.edu.au

Presentation: ppt icon (1.54 MB)

This project was led by TAFE Tasmania (Now Tasmanian Polytechnic and Skills Institute) in 2007 and completed in conjunction with the private research and software engineering company, Intelitec Pacific based in Launceston and New England Institute of TAFE in NSW. Since 2007 the Tasmanian Polytechnic and Skills Institute has continued development in the QTI Space to ensure we have technology solutions that assist in addressing Australia's and Tasmania's Skills shortages. The continued development has allowed us to complete the iQTI application to run on the iPhone and GURU, to provide efficient work flows for students and teachers alike to apply for, assess and grant Recognition (RPL). GURU's final output is a student's Training Plan outlining what additional competencies have to be gained after the Recognition assessment is complete.

The iQTI player renders IMS packaged QTI 2.1 files. Results are stored in XML.

GURU uses equella to render IMS packaged QTI 2.1 files. Results are written back to equella and are stored in XML as equella items

Encouragement Award - Adoption of Tablet and screencasting technologies for multi-modal education at the University of Southern Queensland

Organisation: University of Southern Queensland
Contact: Dr. Birgit Loch
Email: Birgit.Loch@usq.edu.au

Presentation: ppt icon (0.64 MB)

This application shows how an individual academic has been able to change policy and attitude of a university towards learning technologies. USQ is a regional multi-modal university with high enrolment of part time, mature age and low-SES students with 75% distance enrolment. To enable these distance students to have a near on-campus experience, and to provide more flexible learning to on campus students, Dr Birgit Loch trialled and led to the adoption tablet PCs and screen recording software in 2009 as part of two university Learning and Teaching Fellowships with initially tight budgets and considerable opposition, following Dr. Loch's own trials and experiments with the technologies in previous years. This has placed USQ at the forefront of technology use in learning and teaching, with other institutions now seeking Dr. Loch's advice on the technologies and how to engage academics and university management.

WestOne Resource Development Framework

Organisation: WestOne Services
Contact: Maria Amesz
Email: Maria.Amesz@trainingwa.wa.gov.au

Presentation: Flash presentation (6.4 MB)

The WestOne Resource Development Framework has been developed to assist practitioners and providers in the Vocational Education and Training (VET) environment with the production of high quality learning resources for training purposes.

The WestOne Resource Development Framework a CD/online resource which:

WestOne Services has supported the implementation of this product by engaging in a rigorous client support program. The clients here are on two levels. On the first level is the practitioner who is developing the learning and/or assessment resource and on the second level is the learner who will benefit from the quality resources which are developed. This has included client presentations and workshops, in-house and Conference workshops to large and small Registered Training Organisations (RTOs), email, phone and web-conferencing support.

There has been a significant uptake of the use of the WestOne Resource Development Framework with over 75% of the resource development projects funded through the Western Australian VET Workforce and Curriculum Development Projects ($2M) through the Department of Education and Training, utilising the resource and support provided. The product was first developed on CD and is now also available online.

Nextmail advanced collaboration

Organisation: Studentnet
Contact: Kevin Karp
Email: kjk@studentnet.edu.au

Presentation: pdf icon (0.3 MB)

Nextmail's Collaboration Account feature permits flexible, secure, and powerful collaboration opportunities to be established between local and remote participants on a true peer to peer basis.

For instance a remote student can establish a collaboration session with the central school. The remote student may, for instance, choose to print a document on the school's printer. At the same time another remote student can use their collaboration account to also establish a collaboration session with the original student. The new remote student may, for instance, visit a web page that is located on the original student's notebook.

Moreover, each students activities are directly traceable and loggable as they each have a permanently allocated unique IP address with which they collaborate on a true peer to peer basis. Using this infra-structure:

Encouragement Award - eMarking Assistant: helping teachers provide quality feedback on electronic assignments and use electronic marking rubrics

Organisation: eMarking Assistant and the University of Southern Queensland
Contact: Dr. Peter Evans
Email: info@emarkingassistant.com

Presentation: http://emarkingassistant.com/LearningImpactAward/

eMarking Assistant provides tools and processes to help teachers provide detailed feedback on electronic assignments and when completing marking rubrics and marking sheets. eMarking Assistant installs into any version of Microsoft Word for Windows in less than a minute, adding additional functionality and toolbars useful to markers and graders.

It allows teachers to quickly build banks of reusable comments containing text, images, links, and tables and then to pick these from floating toolbars to insert into the margin of student assignments. Spoken comments can also be recorded in Word and embedded into the document and saved for future reuse. Comments are hierarchically listed in a comment picker which clearly displays the text of the comment allowing first time users to quickly scan all comments and use them without needing to remember cryptic codes. Tablet computer users can insert and reuse ink based comments. Comments can also be inserted into the text of a document with a sequential number that can be written on physical assignments or stamped onto PDF or documents which can't be edited in Word. The reusable comments can be saved to comment bank documents for future use, back-up or to be distributed to others. Comment banks can also be harvested from a folder of assignments that have been marked using Word track changes and Word comments.

eMarking Assistant also allows the creation of automated marking rubrics allowing teachers to click cells and use function keys or toolbar buttons to highlight performance standards and record, increase or decrease marks. Another toolbar button totals, and rescales the marks and converts the mark to a percentage and a grade. Templates are provided allowing teachers to create eRubrics containing their own criteria, standards, and grades with corresponding mark ranges and "traffic light" colours to clearly show assessment levels. eMarking Assistant also helps clarify the link between marks in the rubric and inline comments in the assignment by allowing the standards, performance levels and marks to be easily inserted as comments into the margin of the assignment.

Supported by:

Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations logo University of Southern Queensland logo IMS Global Learning Consortium logo

Sponsors:

Education Technology Solutions logo Aarnet logo Motorola logo

Uecomm logo Lappset logo framework estandards logo