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COFA Online wins USA Award for Exemplary Online Learning Resources

Posted by Simon McIntyre - March 19th, 2012
COFA Online's research and professional development project Learning to Teach Online which was developed in conjunction with the ALTC, has been awarded a major award by the MERLOT organisation in the United States. Image by Svilen Milev.

 

World leading Open Educational Resource (OER) recognises COFA Online with major award

 

Learning to Teach Online has just been given its second major award! First was the Australian 2011 Ascilite Innovation and Excellence Award, and now we are thrilled to learn that the project has received another major award from the United States of America!

 

MERLOT (or Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching) has awarded Learning to Teach Online their 2012 MERLOT Award for Exemplary Online Learning Resources – MERLOT Classics.

 

This was a completely unexpected honour, as winners for this award are selected purely from a peer review process from within the organisation's editorial panel of academics. It is wonderful to know that so many of our peers find value and worth in the Learning to Teach Online project, across disciplines and countries!

The COFA Online team is excited to be receiving the award in person at the awards ceremony in Las Vegas, and giving a special 40 minute presentation showcasing the project and its global impact to the delegates of the 5th Annual International Symposium for Emerging Technologies for Online Learning in July this year.

MERLOT is a US based Open Educational Resource (OER) with over 100,000 members, and describes itself as "a leading edge, user-centered, collection of peer reviewed higher education, online learning materials, catalogued by registered members and a set of faculty development support services". It is supported by an international collaboration of 15 professional educational organisations, 11 digital libraries and 10 education related corporations."

 

A big thanks to the ALTC (Australian Learning and Teaching Council, and the Office for Learning and Teaching) and to all those who have participated in the project by providing technical support, sharing their expertise in interviews, or by watching and sharing the resource with colleagues.

 

  

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MERLOT gives Learning to Teach Online project a perfect score in peer review

Posted by Simon McIntyre - January 9th, 2012
The Learning to Teach Online project scores a perfect 5 star peer review in all categories from OER giant, MERLOT.

5 star academic peer review for project by leading OER

Upon returning to work early in the new year, we were thrilled to discover that MERLOT*, one of the world's leading Open Educational Resources (OER) had peer reviewed the entire Learning to Teach Online project, and had given it ratings of 5 stars out of five for each of its review categories: Content Quality, Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool and Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty. You can read the review comments about the project here.

If you have been following our news about the project, you may know that MERLOT has awarded a few of our individual episodes very positive peer reviews before, but this review encompasses the entire Learning to Teach Online collection as a single resource. As well as receiving the maximum rating for each review category, we were especially thrilled to see that the reviewers had no concerns with any aspects of the project.

What a way to kick off 2012! We hope that this great academic  peer review will encourage more teachers in different disciplines worldwide to use the resource to improve their own online teaching. Thanks very much to the MERLOT team for taking the time to review the resource as a whole.

 

*The MERLOT website describes the US based initiative as "a leading edge, user-centered, collection of peer reviewed higher education, online learning materials, catalogued by registered members and a set of faculty development support services". It is supported by an international collaboration of 15 professional educational organisations, 11 digital libraries and 10 education related corporations.

  

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Learning to Teach Online wins Ascilite award for Innovation & Excellence

Posted by Simon McIntyre - December 14th, 2011
Simon McIntyre and Karin Watson receive the 2011 Ascilite Innovation and Excellence Award for Learning to Teach Online.

Learning to Teach Online recognised by peers

Recently, Simon McIntyre and Karin Watson received the 2011 Innovation and Excellence Award for their work in developing the Learning to Teach Online project. It was awarded by the Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education (Ascilite). The following description of the award is taken from the Ascilite website:

The ascilite Innovation and Excellence Awards aim to recognise innovative projects and initiatives undertaken by a team of people in support of the exemplary and research informed use of technologies for teaching and learning in tertiary education. Applications for this award are likely to include:

  • Innovative solutions which promote the exemplary and research informed use of technologies for teaching and learning in tertiary education.
  • Product development projects which promote the exemplary and research informed use of technologies for teaching and learning in tertiary education.
  • Large-scale implementation initiatives which promote the exemplary and research informed use of technologies for teaching and learning in tertiary education.
  • Major professional development initiatives which promotes the exemplary and research informed use of technologies for teaching and learning in tertiary education.

This prestigious award was presented during a gala dinner at the 2011 Ascilite conference, amongst many peers from universities around Australia, New Zealand and other Australasian locations. It was a great honour to have the value of the project recognised this way, and it was made even more meaningful by the support and praise offered from fellow online educators.

 

Thank you!

The team would of course like to thank Ascilite for this award. In addition, a very big thank you goes to all the academics, students, and other university staff who contributed their wisdom and experience to the project. As well as the contributors, we would also like to acknowledge all of the hard work that the camera crew and production team put into the project. The high production values have been appreciated by many! It is because of the hard work from all of the above people that teachers from all over the world have been able to relate to the episodes. Your contributions have helped to motivate teachers from so many countries and disciplines to begin their online teaching career!

The award was a fantastic way to wrap up 2011! We hope that many more online teachers discover and benefit from the Learning to Teach Online project well into the future!

 

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