Blended Learning in Labs & Lessons
Finding the Balance: Getting the Blend Right in University Teaching
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Sixth Annual Symposium
November 26 2021 @ 10 am - 12:30 pm AEDT
Online via Zoom
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Convenors: Sharon Herkes & Meloni Muir
Organising Committee: Stephen Bested & Dane King
Blended Learning Symposium 2021
Finding the Balance: Getting the Blend Right in University Teaching
We are thrilled to announce that this years Blended Learning Symposium 2021 was a success. Take advantage of the chance to be inspired by some truly talented individuals and check out the recordings for the sessions in the Schedule below.
NOVEMBER 26
Symposium Schedule 2021
10:00 AM AEDT
Duration: 1 hr
Other Time Zones
INTRODUCTION & PANEL DISCUSSION
Finding the Balance: Getting the Blend Right in University Teaching
Panel Discussion Featuring:
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Professor Geoff Crisp
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Professor Alyson Simpson
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Dr Christine Slade
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Associate Professor Peter Bryant
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Ms Isla Mowbray
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*See below for further details.
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*Watch the recording of the session HERE*
11:00 AM AEDT
Duration: 10 min
Other Time Zones
REFRESHMENT BREAK
11:10 AM AEDT
Duration: 50 min
Other Time Zones
FACILITATED CONVERSATIONS & WORKSHOPS
Choose Your Breakout Room
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Interactive Online Platforms: A Lt Case Study
Dr Michelle Yap & Dr Max Lai (Monash University Malaysia)
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2. Authenticity and Academic Integrity in Assessment Design
Dr Christine Slade (University of Queensland)
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3. Design principles for successful hybrid and hyflex learning
Associate Professor Peter Bryant (University of Sydney)
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4. Management and Academics: Ensuring a great student experience
Professor Geoff Crisp (University of Canberra)
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5. Planning for dialogic learning design
Professor Alyson Simpson (University of Sydney)
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*See below for further details.
12:00 PM AEDT
Duration: 30 min
Other Time Zones
BREAKOUT ROOM WRAP-UP & CLOSING REMARKS
*Watch the recording of the session HERE​*
Meet our Panelists
Geoff Crisp
University of Canberra
Professor Geoff Crisp completed his PhD in Chemistry at the Australian National University and was an academic in chemistry for twenty years. He developed his passion for learning and teaching as well as continuing his work in chemistry during this time, being Associate Dean, Director of Online Education and Director of Professional Development at the University of Adelaide. Geoff was Dean, Learning and Teaching at RMIT University and Pro Vice Chancellor (Education) at the University of New South Wales. He has received numerous teaching awards and Australian Learning and Teaching Council Fellowships in 2006 and 2009. Geoff is a HERDSA Fellow and a Principal Fellow of the HEA and is now DVC Academic at the University of Canberra.
Alyson Simpson
University of Sydney
Alyson Simpson is a Professor of Education specialising in English and Literacy Education.
Starting with a background as a teacher librarian she now works with graduate-entry trainee teachers in Undergraduate and Graduate-entry programs at the University of Sydney. She is currently the Associate Dean (Education) in FASS. She is a Senior Fellow of the AdvanceHE fellowship program. In 2015 she was awarded an Office of Learning and Teaching citation for her: “passionate commitment to dialogic pedagogy that inspires students as literacy educators learning to teach critically and creatively with children's literature”.
Alyson has served as a consultant to state, national and international education groups. She has rich international experience managing and collaborating in research projects with academics from around the world. She has worked for not-for-profit and peak professional associations supporting improvements in children’s literacy through creative teaching of reading with children’s literature.
Her research projects in higher education and primary schools include work on the power of dialogic learning and the impact of digital technology on reading practices and pedagogy. Publications in recent years include: Simpson, A., Pomerantz, F., Kaufman, D. & Ellis, S. (Eds.). (2020) Developing Habits of Noticing in Literacy and Language Classrooms: Research and Practice across Professional Cultures. Routledge. Mobile Literacies: The case of the Ipad (Springer, 2018) and The use of children’s literature in teaching (Routledge, 2016). In 2018 she was awarded the status of KOALA Legend, at the Kids Own Australian Literature Awards.
Christine Slade
University of Queensland
Dr Christine Slade (PhD GradCertProfLearn BA (ComPlan&Devt) PFHEA) is a Senior Lecturer in Higher Education in the Institute for Teaching and Learning Innovation (ITaLI) at the University of Queensland (UQ) where she is the Academic Lead – Assessment. In this role Dr Slade contributes to UQ’s strategic priorities in assessment and academic integrity and has leadership responsibilities in the University’s Academic Integrity Action Plan . Dr Slade was the leader of the UQ Academic Integrity Team, which was a finalist in the augural Tracey Bretag Prize 2021. She currently leads a HERDSA-funded grant exploring why students use ‘buy-sell-trade’ filing sharing sites with the view to inform institutional decision making. Dr Slade also joined a small team of academic integrity experts, under Professor Tracey Bretag’s leadership in 2019-2020, to deliver the TEQSA-funded national academic integrity workshops and toolkit of resources.
Previously, Dr Slade represented UQ on the international Epigeum Academic Integrity Development Collaborative, which designed several contemporary academic integrity modules for students and staff. In 2017-2018 Dr Slade was a supervisor of an undergraduate student-as-partners’ research project investigating the impact of the persuasive features of contract cheating websites on vulnerable students. The results were published in the journal, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, and received international press interest. In 2016-2017 Dr Slade led a grant funded by the Asia Pacific Forum on Educational Integrity (APFEI), which used co-design workshops to strengthen the verification of student identity in assessment. Further information about Dr Slade’s research can be found at https://researchers.uq.edu.au/researcher/14189.
Peter Bryant
University of Sydney
Peter Bryant is Associate Dean (Education) and Associate Professor at the University of Sydney Business School (Australia). He has over 25 years experience in designing and delivering transformative social sciences and business pedagogical change programs in both the United Kingdom and Australia. He is an active researcher in higher education strategy, DIY media and the student experience.  He tweets @peterbryantHE.
Isla Mowbray
University of Sydney
Isla is a University of Sydney Union (USU) board director and is the current USU enviro officer. She was a general executive of the Students’ Representative Council in 2020 and has been involved in student activism since her first year of uni in 2019. She studies a Bachelor of Visual Arts at the University of Sydney and has transferred her studio practice to her bedroom because of online uni.
Choose your Room
WORLDWIDE
Interactive Online Platforms: A Lt Case Study
Michelle Yap, Hientet (Max) Lai & Liam Farley
Monash University Malaysia
ADInstruments
This workshop will explore your use of online platforms focussing on ‘Lt’ which provides easy and flexible authoring of online lessons and assessments. Additionally, it allows for real-time (live) data acquisition for the health and medical sciences.
WORLDWIDE
Authenticity and Academic integrity in Assessment Design
Christine Slade
University of Queensland
Educators are encouraged to develop authentic assessment tasks for students so they can practice authentic work-related knowledge, applications, and skills. Similarly, ensuring academic integrity is high on the pedagogical agenda to limit the opportunities for students to cheat through assessment design. This facilitated conversation will explore the relationship between authenticity and academic integrity as principles of assessment, to learn from participants’ experiences, and to co-design tips for others who seek to improve their assessment practice.
Hybrid and hyflex learning are lasting legacies of our years of pandemic education. For educators, with cohorts spread across the world by closed borders, these modes of delivery are a necessary response to ensure a safe return to campus and the ongoing online education of vulnerable and offshore students. Hyflex learning in particular has been a controversial and much debated mode of delivery. This session will look at how hybrid and hyflex learning done poorly is still bad teaching. Done well, it can be truly transformative, innovative and facilitate deep learning. The simple key to doing it well is design.
Making the most of the spaces we have: Design principles for successful hybrid and hyflex learning
Peter Bryant
University of Sydney
Management and Academics: Ensuring a great student experience
Geoff Crisp
University of Canberra
Universities have come under increased pressure to ensure that their learning and teaching is engaging, effective and efficient. Sometimes there is a perception that you can deliver on two out three of these attributes at any one time. We should be able to deliver all three simultaneously if management and academics work together to ensure that the design and delivery or curricula, as well as learning environments, are aligned appropriately. We will discuss some of the lessons learned from the past two years of Covid disruptions to higher education and how management and academics can work collaboratively as we transform into the new Covid landscape.
Planning for dialogic learning design
Alyson Simpson
University of Sydney
What have we learned from speaking to screens filled with avatars and blank squares or reading chat boxes filled with playful, off the cuff comments? Were the students trying to tell us something? Did we listen?
The pandemic has taught us many lessons. Let us share those understandings and consider how we might work in partnership with students to design teaching and assessment that fosters purposeful interactivity.
Contact Us
If you require further information about the up and coming Symposium, please fill in your contact details below
Tel: +61 02 8204 4497
160 Oxford Street, Darlinghurst NSW, 2010
