Monika Dybalska, FeedbackFruit
The inspirED Australasia 2022 teaching and learning conference, co-hosted by FeedbackFruits and Western Sydney University, will take place on December 8th at Western Sydney University. The conference provides a platform to showcase the most innovative pedagogical practices that drive digital transformation in Australia forward. Here are the top 4 key insights you can expect to hear when attending inspirED Australasia 2022.
Discover experience-based strategies for innovating learning design
The conference theme, Innovating learning design for student success, highlights effective, evidence-based course design strategies in the region. Our opening keynote speaker, Simon Bedford of Western Sydney University, will discuss the university’s strategies for digital transformation and our closing keynote, Patrick Stoddart of The University of Melbourne, will dive deeper into cultivating assessment for learning with innovative learning design.
Learn about cultivating authentic, competency-based assessment
Innovative assessment moves beyond summative, numerical grade – it has to reflect the overall, individual learning journey, as well as the growing need for fostering lifelong skills. Authentic and competency-based assessments are considered the most effective approaches to address this, as they focus on measuring students’ success in skill-relevant and real-life situations throughout the entire learning process. So how can institutions implement these evaluation practices effectively?
In his session, “Stimulating a culture of authentic learning and assessment”, professor Michael Sankey will provide an answer to this question and showcase best practices for creating authentic assessment opportunities to build trust and a learning community.
Explore how to leverage collaboration to foster 21st-century skills
Collaboration is among the essential elements of active course design, being the driving force behind student engagement and skill development. However, effectively implementing and scaling collaborative learning remains a challenge, especially in large-scale online and hybrid settings.
In her session, “Leveraging edtech to develop student teamwork skills”, Dr. Tiffany Gunning of Deakin University will share how authentic assessment can be leveraged to scale teamwork and foster 21st-century skills such as feedback literacy, evaluative judgment, and critical thinking.
Exchange ideas on increasing student engagement in diverse modalities
Maintaining student engagement is a difficult undertaking in any setting, but it becomes especially challenging in online, hybrid, and asynchronous settings. Ensuring consistently high-quality education for all learners, in all learning modalities requires a diversified approach.
With the aid of pedagogical technology, institutions have started to diversify their teaching strategies and utitilising more pedagogical approaches to address the engagement challenges, from Flipping the Classroom, Activating study materials, Online Annotation, to Discussion forums.
Tori Llewelyn of Flinders University will discuss one of theses strategies in her session, “A tale of two cohorts: use of online learning tools to optimise online (asynchronous) and face-to-face student engagement and outcomes” and provide practical insights based on her experience in a large-scale, mixed-modality course.
We look forward to welcoming you!
inspirED Australasia 2022 will feature the best practices, strategies, and insights related to these four pedagogical themes and much more. To join the conference and exchange insights with innovative educators in the region, register for free here!