Learning Impact Awards 2011

Finalists

From 18 quality finalists the following were successful at LIA2011

Rob Costello and Jason d'Offay

Mathletics (3P Learning Pty Ltd)

Bronwen Campbell and Rob Gatt

Diving Supervisors and Chamber Supervisor Training (Australian Diver Accreditation Scheme, Inc)

Andrew Douch

Redefining 'Class' (Wanganui Park Secondary College)

Encouragement Award

Finance for Housekeepers (Lycette and Associates)
Remote Access Laboratory (USQ)
BlogED (NSW Department of Education and Training (DET)
Deloitte Leadership Academy (Deloitte)

People's Choice

Tri-Border Attendance Strategy (Department of Education, WA)

Finalists

BlogED

Organisation: New South Wales Department of Education and Training (DET)
Contact: Tim Hand
Email: tim.hand@tafensw.edu.au

As part of its ongoing commitment to enhanced student learning outcomes through the use of technology the NSW Department of Education and Training (DET) has developed a blogging tool known as blogED. BlogED was developed in accordance with DET policies and guidelines and has incorporated feedback from students, teachers and parents. Students access blogED through their DET student portal. When using the DET blog students are able to:

use the same login they use for email and Internet browsing
experience the same filters that are currently applied to the use of email and Internet browsing
be guided by current permission forms regarding confidentiality and privacy
be protected by DET standards of acceptable use of online communications.

The blog was trialed in both schools and TAFE in 2009, and went into phased release for schools in March 2010 and TAFE colleges in July 2010.

Mathletics

Organisation: 3P Learning Pty Ltd
Contact: Andrew Smith
Email: andrew.smith@3plearning.com

Mathletics is a global online maths resource. Above all, Mathletics engages and motivates to switch student onto maths through a personalised and reward filled environment which incorporates the very best elements of live and global competition. Students are able to access a custom pathway through curriculum materials, with explicit teaching sequences built into the support sections. This allows individual students to move at pace, over a range of topics, and access structured support when they need it, so there is no longer need to push everyone through a lock step curriculum. Students can access this on demand, in their own time. This approach means the instruction can be more granular, more self directed, and personalised in a more time efficient manner for the teacher. Mathletics schools automatically have access to the latest developments as they happen, meaning that students, teachers and parents can be confident that they are using the most effective and relevant resource available. Our implementation team works hand in hand with schools to ensure that Mathletics is successfully integrated to support the existing school program.

Deloitte Leadership Academy

Organisation: Deloitte
Contact: Tom Richardson
Email: trichardson@deloitte.com.au

The Deloitte Leadership Academy is a unique online learning management and networking solution that develops the management and leadership skills of Senior Executives and connects them within a community of business leaders.

The program includes:

a selection of e-learning content and certification courses from leading international and local business schools
immediate access via a user-friendly website
access via the in-flight entertainment systems of next generation Qantas aircraft
a contact directory of your peers and colleagues, along with the ability to interact with them using collaboration tools, discussion boards and blogs.
invitations to in-person forums and open discussions to build networks.

NIMC Online Training Course: Supporting a national medication safety initiative

Organisation: NPS: Better choices, Better health
Contact: Dr. Michelle Koo
Email: mkoo@nps.org.au

In a national effort to improve medication safety, Australian hospitals use a standardised medication chart for all patients in hospitals. This chart, known as the National Inpatient Medication Chart (NIMC), has been developed to ensure that complete and accurate information is included for all in-hospital medication orders so that the likelihood of medication errors is reduced. Therefore it is important that the NIMC is filled in correctly, thus health professionals need to learn how to use the chart correctly.

NPS: Better choices, Better health has worked with clinical subject matter experts identified by the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care (ACSQHC) to write, develop, produce and host the NIMC Online Training Course. This training course consists of a series of modules which guides the learner through the principles of safe prescribing and demonstrates how to complete the NIMC correctly. It is freely available to all health professionals and health professional students across Australia.

This new course replaces the original NIMC eLearning course developed in 2006. The content and structure have been completely rewritten and the course is delivered via a new learning management system, thus it is considered to be a new course (rather than just the revision of an established course).

Rich Media Self Assessment Modules

Organisation: University of New England
Contact: Brian Landrigan
Email: blandrig@une.edu.au

The Rich Media Self Assessment modules were developed using Udutu software but could be made with a variety of tools that have the capability of creating a branching scenario.(eg. Xerte.) Student responses to multiple choice questions determines their path through the module and allows students to evaluate their competencies with the readings and subject content.Rich media is used throughout the modules to engage and represent information in a variety of contexts.

Redefining 'Class'

Organisation: Wanganui Park Secondary College
Contact: Andrew Douch
Email: adouch@gmail.com

Over 5 years Andrew Douch has redefined what it means for a secondary school biology student to be in a "class". By removing much of what used to be done in the classroom, and delivering that to students online via a podcast, screencasts, an LMS and an Elluminate virtual meeting space, he has freed up class time for more of the learning activities that actually require face-to-face interaction. In addition, These new conduits of communication have given students choice over when they learn, where they learn, and for how long they learn, as well as allowing students from outside the school, the state, and even outside the country to participate.

Tri-Border Attendance Strategy

Organisation: Department of Education, Western Australia
Contact: Ingrid Strong
Email: ingrid.strong@det.wa.edu.au

The Tri-Border Attendance Strategy was established by Ministerial directive in June 2007. The strategy was initiated to improve the enrolment and attendance of transient Aboriginal students who move across state and territory borders.

The project team developed an information system to consolidate and merge student data from all participating jurisdictions. This data was required to be submitted on a daily basis by jurisdictions to ensure accurate and timely information could be relied upon for school decision making.

The system has been in trial since October 2010 and will be used by all project schools in February 2011.

Nextmail advanced collaboration

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

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 logable 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:

Security is improved:

Identity management is improved (helping avert cyber-bullying issues)
Flexibility is increased permitting much more intense collaboration using just about any client-server technology.

Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority (ASADA) e-Learning

Organisation: Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority (ASADA)
Contact: Kellie Chamberlain
Email: kellie.chamberlain@asada.gov.au

The Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority (ASADA) is an Australian government agency and is recognised as being at the forefront of the fight against doping in sport. As Australia’s National Anti-Doping Organisation under the World Anti-Doping Code, ASADA is the focal point for Australia’s efforts against doping in sport. It is ASADA’s role to preserve and protect sports’ value – not only for athletes, support personnel and sporting organisations – but also for all Australians.

Salmat’s Skills Optimiser Learning Management System (Salmat’s LMS) was configured and branded to create ASADA e-Learning. ASADA e-Learning is a web-based learning platform that enables ASADA to effectively and efficiently manage a national education program. ASADA e-Learning makes it easier for the Australian sporting community to get educated about anti-doping. It is free and easy to use. Anyone can register for anti-doping education by visiting: http://www.asada.gov.au.

Finance for Housekeepers

Organisation: Lycette and Associates
Contact: Liz Lycette
Email: liz@lycetteandassociates.com

Finance for Housekeepers empowers and up-skills Housekeeping Managers in hotels, hospitals, aged-care facilities and similar establishments with financial management competencies through an online training program. In these businesses Housekeeping Managers often have responsibility for the largest and most labour intensive department, managing up to 200 staff and large operating budgets (in the millions of dollars).

Our program was developed with seed funding from the Australian Flexible Learning Framework and specifically designed to provide Housekeeping Managers with the skills required to effectively manage often large budgets.

The online Finance for Housekeepers program is based on a well-established, accredited face-to-face program delivered by Balfour College that has been mapped against the three financial Units of Competency from the Australian Certificate IV in Hospitality from the Tourism, Hospitality and Events Training package v2 (SIT07). The course provides a fully facilitated and collaborative learning and assessment model and uses a Moodle Learning Management System (LMS) to provide resources and opportunities for collaboration; and Captivate to develop audiovisual explanations of key concepts.

A report about the project is available here: http://hospitalit-e.wikispaces.com/.

Diving Supervisor and Chamber Supervisor Training Simulator

Organisation: Australian Diver Accreditation Scheme (ADAS), Inc
Contact: Bronwen Campbell
Email: bc@activelearning.com.au

Australian Diver Accreditation Scheme (ADAS) has recently completed the construction of a world-first diving supervisor training simulator supported by the Commonwealth Government through the Teaching and Learning Capital Fund. The simulator is a sophisticated e-learning tool for training and assessing the skills of offshore diving supervisors and chamber supervisors, with an emphasis on emergency response. The e-learning is integrated with hardware control panels, using video and audio immersive learning. It also includes induction, assessment and support materials available on the integrated Moodle learning management system, which is accessible both directly from the simulator screen and via the local area network or internet.

A 5 minute video overview of the simulator capabilities is available on the ADAS website at http://www.adas.org.au/simulator.

The training simulator is a completely new concept in this industry targeted directly at reduction of accident risk and improved efficiency of diving operations.

GPS Learning Pathways

Organisation: Box Hill Institute
Contact: Pauline Farrell
Email: p.farrell@bhtafe.edu.au

GPS Learning Pathways is an online induction program that will provide a structure for students to define their goals and help establish plans to meet those goals. Within the three planning areas; Personal, educational and career planning, the students will be able to identify their skills and skills gaps with assistance in developing a method of approach to address. Further, the students will be able to access a repository area where documents, key assessments, evidence of participation, certificates, resumes, photo-stories, and such, may be stored using an ePortfolio account with Mahara that will follow the student on exit from the Institute.

This program also provides the following institute-wide opportunities:

Mapping to an AQTF funded unit of competence
Access to Institute wide data for broader communication
Access to learner data i.e. learning styles, RPL requests, learning plan data, career aspirations and much more.

Generic Competencies

Organisation: Box Hill Institute
Contact: Pauline Farrell
Email: p.farrell@bhtafe.edu.au

Box Hill Institute (BHI) has developed an innovative way to teach common units of competency. These units include Occupational Health and Safety, Communication, Customer Service, Innovation, Conflict, Cultural Diversity, Work Effectively and Sustainability.

The media rich ‘Hub’ teaches common material through activities, videos and Web 2.0 tools that encourage interaction between students from different teaching areas.

Tweaks: Enabling dynamic sites for academics, designers and programmers

Organisation: Queensland University of Technology
Contact: Tim Plaisted
Email: t.plaisted@qut.edu.au

Tweaks: Enabling dynamic sites for academics, designers and programmers enable academics to easily customise and extend their Learning Management System (LMS) sites. It was created at Queensland University of Technology and released as an open source tool to advance the practice of extending the LMS for dynamic learning approaches. A wide range of Tweaks are available, for example: learning activities (Quick Quiz and FAQs); presentation and page structure (Unit Map Tables, Replace Icons and added support for image maps and style sheets); and LMS tools (Print Frame Link and loading web sites inline). Tweaks have been designed in consultation with academics for easy reuse of learning design templates and central maintenance to support learning for large institutions (40,000+). Tweaks has strategic learning impact at the student level through enhanced online learning resources, and for academic staff by providing structured approaches to online learning resource development.

myLearningSpace

Organisation: Monash University (eEducation Centre)
Contact: Kati Franke
Email: katharina.franke@monash.edu

myLearningSpace provides a peer-driven collaborative environment where teachers and students are exploring together on their learning journey. Through a combination of existing proprietary tools and custom collaborative software, teachers can opt in to various levels of this approach depending on their level of comfort and the relevance to their course.

myLearningSpace combines the three aspects of pedagogy, technology and space to provide students with a collaborative learning experience that starts in the lecture theatre and continues beyond the classroom and the campus. It incorporates Tablet PCs, high performance wireless infrastructure, collaborative software, and sound pedagogical principles.

The myLearningSpace project began in 2008, with four lecturers and a 100-student trial based on science (biology) subjects. It was extended to a pilot in 2009, with 20 lecturers from the Faculty of Arts, Faculty of Science and the Faculty of Medicine participating. In 2010, myLearningSpace expanded to over 75 lecturers and 1,000 students in the Faculty of Medicine, with a further 150 lecturers participating across nine faculties at Monash. In 2011, myLearningSpace is now used as a teaching and learning approach by more than 250 lecturers and 12,000 students, including undergraduate and postgraduate courses.

In 2010, the myLearningSpace approach received the Victorian eLearning Industry Excellence Award.

Remote Access Laboratory

Organisation: University of Southern Queensland
Contact: Dr. Alexander Kist
Email: kist@usq.edu.au

Practical experiments and laboratory exercises form an integral part of Engineering education programs and are a requirement for program accreditation. To provide off-campus (external/distance) students with practical learning experiences equivalent to that of their on-campus peers is both logistically difficult and resource intensive. The Remote Access Laboratory Project was undertaken to provide all students with remote access to video-supported laboratory experimentation to allow students, regardless of location, to actively engage in contextual action-oriented learning and achieve course objectives with less emphasis on attending on-campus training sessions. The project implementation followed a unique process as the project team included staff members from the Division of ICT as well as the Faulty of Engineering and Surveying. Key project outcomes included development of a novel access system and successful deployment of the infrastructure. The Remote Access Laboratory is now available to all Faculties at the University of Southern Queensland.

English Study Destiny

Organisation: Vital English
Contact: Ruth Ferraro
Email: ruth.ferraro@vitalenglish.com

Vital English designs and distributes English Language teaching (ELT) and learning solutions globally. We now have one of the largest product ranges of any online ELT provider in the market.

The vision: to distribute the most widely-used English Language products in the world through building strong relationships with our partners.

mInteract™

Organisation: University of Technology Sydney
Contact: Andrew Litchfield
Email: andrew.litchfield@uts.edu.au

mInteract™ is an online tool developed to support interactivity in all learning spaces at sites of formal and informal education. Cheaper, more versatile and easier-to- use than commercial clickers, mInteract is a no-to-low cost web-based application that allows students to use their internet-enabled phone, tablet, laptop or other networked mobile device to improve learner engagement. The ownership of ‘smart’ mobile devices is rapidly increasing so the tool has the potential to improve experiential learning everywhere wireless technology works.

Since 2008 mInteract has been trialled, evaluated and improved in a first-year subject ‘Accounting for Business’ with large student numbers at the University of Technology Sydney. All evaluation has been very positive and those students who did not use mInteract still were actively engaged as at home when watching a TV quiz show. It is intended to make mInteract available as open-source software to encourage widespread use, support further development and to facilitate and enhance sustainable, interactive, experiential learning everywhere.