An interim guide to assist WIL practitioners who are newly offering placements and major projects online instead of face-to-face has recently been released for comments. The guide has been produced by a cross institutional research team who are currently investigating virtual Work Integrated Learning for a project funded by ACEN.

Mentimeter is a digital polling software that enables you to interact with your students synchronously and asynchronously with live polls, quizzes, word clouds, Q&As and more. It enables you to engage students through considered questions that, if well designed, and the purpose explained, can be used to create a constructive learning dialogue between you and your students.

Microsoft Teams is an industry-based software that can facilitate collaboration in teaching and learning. From chat, discussion, team meetings, artefact generation, and project management, it provides an opportunity for students to collaborated in one space whilst the facilitator can oversee the project and provide insights where required.

On Friday June 5th, Deakin University, in collaboration with Griffith University, hosted the first Australian FeedbackFruits Inspiration Day: Empowering Pedagogies with FeedbackFruits. The shift to an online webinar format didn’t dampen any enthusiasm, with 178 participants from across Australia and the globe gathering to share ideas and strategies for developing students’ evaluative judgements and teamwork skills.

The DLE program of work around our evolving digital learning environment was presented to almost 60 staff members from across the University on June 16th.
Presentations on the CloudDeakin Upgrade, and our pilot projects with Collaboration, Portfolio and Self and Peer Assessment tools were delivered to an engaged audience.

From the beginning of Trimester 2, two exciting tools will be integrated into D2L and DeakinAir that will significantly, automatically, increase the accessibility of a large portion of learning resources. These are Kaltura Reach and Blackboard Ally.

With T2 readily approaching now is the time to start planning for student success in online learning. To support you in doing this, the CloudFirst Team have created a self-paced resource (CloudFirst102) and two upcoming workshops where you can work with the team to develop a plan for setting expectations for students and creating engaging online seminars.

Why might you map assessment (and curriculum) across a Course? In this presentation three academics reflected on their purpose and processes for their mapping projects, and provided very useful insights about the outcomes of mapping in their respective courses.

The second ACEN Critical Conversation was held last week. These sessions are a virtual platform for discussion of current issues facing WIL practitioners as we respond to COVID19. The guest speakers were Associate Professor Rola Ajjawi, Dr Joanna Tai and Professor David Boud, who presented on CRADLE’s guide for assessment in WIL. The guide is in final development, having been progressed through an ACEN funded project last year.