Technology & Social Inclusion: Enhancing the First Year Experience • Overview of current technology trends in higher education and their impact on student social inclusion • Examples of successful technology-based initiatives aimed at improving the first-year experience for students • Potential challenges and ethical considerations related to the use of technology for social inclusion • Strategies for integrating technology into existing programs and resources to promote social inclusion • Future directions for technology-based initiatives in promoting social inclusion in first year experience. Presented at: ENHANCING STUDENT RETENTION & SUCCESS THROUGH FIRST YEAR EXPERIENCE, ORIENTATION AND SOCIAL INCLUSION: 2023. SkillingSA Prof Michael Sankey, Director: Charles Darwin University

1. CRICOS Provider No: 00300K (NT/VIC) 03286A (NSW) RTO Provider No: 0373 TEQSA Provider ID PRV12069
Technology & Social Inclusion: Enhancing the
First Year Experience
Professor Michael Sankey
Director Learning Futures and Lead Education Architect
President, Australasian Council on Open Distance and eLearning (ACODE)
Community Fellow, Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education (ASCILITE)
michael_sankey

2. Charles Darwin University acknowledges all
First Nations people across the lands on
which we live and work, and we pay our
respects to Elders both past and present.
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3. • Current technology trends in higher education
• Examples of successful technology-based initiatives
aimed at improving the first-year experience
• Potential challenges and ethical considerations related to
the use of technology
• Strategies for integrating technology into existing
programs and resources to promote social inclusion
• Future directions for technology-based initiatives in first
year experience.
Applying the Student social inclusion lens to:
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26,124,814 people (30 Sept 2022)

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9. Hunt, L. & Sankey, M.D. 2013. ‘Getting the Context Right for Quality Teaching and Learning’. In D. Salter (Ed)
Cases on Quality Teaching Practices in Higher Education. IGI Global, London. pp 261-279.
The Student Learning Journey
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• Learnline (Bb Ultra)
• MS Teams
• Bb Ally
• Bb Collaborate
• Zoom/Teams
• FeedbackFruits
• Kaltura
• Padlet
• PebblePad
• Respondus Lockdown
Browser & Monitor
• Turnitin & SafeAssign
• VoiceThread
Current technology trends in higher education

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13. Usability
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https://www.anthology.com/en-apac/products/teaching-and-learning/learning-effectiveness/anthology-ally

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https://www.telas.edu.au

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19. 7. Student training for the effective use of technology
enhanced learning
8. Student support for the use of technology enhanced
learning
Benchmark 7 and 8
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20. 1. Student training is aligned with the technologies and teaching approaches in use
at the institution.
2. Student training for technology enhanced learning is adequately resourced.
3. There are procedures in place to regularly evaluate the training and training
resources provided for students.
4. Coordination occurs between those areas providing training for students.
5. Student training programs are delivered flexibly and address differing skill levels.
6. Student training promotes an ethical approach to the use of social media and the
technology enhanced learning services provided by the institution.
7. Evaluation data is used to inform the planning for continuous improvement of
student development processes.
8. There are clearly defined pathways for students to access the training they
require.
Performance Indicators for 7
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21. 1. The provision of support for students is aligned with the technology enhanced learning services
used by the institution.
2. Student technology enhanced learning support services are resourced.
3. There are clearly defined pathways for students to access support services and these are promoted
to the student body.
4. Support sites and resources are accessible from commonly used devices and the analytics of student
usage are monitored.
5. There are procedures in place to ensure that student support services and resources are regularly
evaluated.
6. There are procedures in place that ensure that evaluation data on technology enhanced learning
support services for students contributes to their continuous improvement.
7. Coordination occurs between those areas providing support for students.
8. There are procedures in place to ensure there is an alignment between student training and student
support.
9. Processes are in place to determine the ongoing support requirements of students.
10. New technology enhanced learning services are fully analysed for student support requirements,
prior to and during the adoption process.
Performance Indicators for 8
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https://oasis.col.org/items/b727fa53-87b2-4718-9dc6-88a6f9109359

23. LMS
& associated tools
O365
& associated tools
Pre Uni Undergraduate Post-graduate Work
Year 1 Year 2 Year 3-4
Work focused patterns for student usage
VLE
Workplace technologies
O365
& associated tools
LMS
& associated tools
Assessment

24. Examples of successful technology-based initiatives
aimed at improving the first-year experience
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31. David Boud’s Conception of
Assessment
“Assessment methods … have a
greater influence on what students
learn than any other single factor. This
influence may well be of greater
importance than the impact of
teaching materials”
Boud, D (1988) Developing Student Autonomy in Learning
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32. 10 CDU priorities for assessment
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• Reduce emphasis on final high-stakes exams
• Reduce propensity for wide-spread quizzes for important assessments
• Look for opportunities for course-wide assessments (alignment across units)
• Weight assessment items aligned with level of learning (low for low-stakes)
• Increase emphasis on formative assessment feedback ‘for learning’ (feedback
literacy)
• Designing active, collaborative, authentic assessment
• Increase the use of WIL, group and peer assessment
• Assessment for inclusion
• Increased use of multimodal assessments
• Reduce essays and long form text that can be easily cheated

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That is:
• First and foremost, it’s about helping
our students form an understanding of
their subject matter
• Building their confidence
• It’s not about trying to catch them out
• If we do find that they don’t know
something, we help build a bridge for
them (formative feedback).

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35. 1.Exams should be closed book.
2.Students should only take a specific set of
notes/pages/texts into exams.
3.A task must be responded to in a particular mode,
most often written, such as an essay.
4.There must be strict time parameters for assessments
such as exams.
5.Tasks cannot be substituted, even if alternatives
equally assure learning outcomes from those
designed
6.The linguistic standards required are those of a
sophisticated first language speaker
7.Inflexible deadlines for assessment must always be
adhered to.
8.Students will be able to operate assessment
technology with ease.
Common assumption about assessment
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https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07294360.2022.2057451

36. • ChatGPT and similar technologies are useful tool, generating
content and ideas to help get words on the page.
• Misinformation is serious. So, we teach students how to use it,
how to understand its limitations, and to fact-check its outputs.
• Just as we teach students how to read critically, how to
evaluate and corroborate evidence, and how to distinguish
good arguments from bad and recognise rubbish.
• But, we don’t want to put Gen AI at the centre of education.
Teaching students how to use Generative AI
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37. • AI provides instant feedback on students’ writing, simplify
complex information and scaffold information on specific task
• It’s helpful for neurodivergent students or students with English
as a second language
• Students struggling to understand concepts can ask AI to
provide examples to aid their understanding.
• The use of AI by students pivots them from being consumers of
learning materials to creators of their own learning resources.
Students can become creators (productive)
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38. • The onus is on us to design assessments relevant to students’
future careers, so the value proposition For AI is diminished
• By clarifying the purpose of tasks in relation to their development,
we can encourage learners to engage with their learning
• Let’s not fool ourselves students will turn to AI, when things start
getting though, so additional strategies are needed.
Continue to design ‘authentic’ assessments
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39. • A key concern is that students won’t actually understand what they
have submitted.
• So, we balance written work with other kinds of assessments., such as
In-person oral presentations (viva’s) that cannot be produced by AI.
• Supplementing essays with other assessments need not come at the
expense of good assessment design.
• There’s good reasons to vary written work with other forms of
assessment; e.g. oral communication skills are enormously valuable
across a range of professions and yet are often undervalued in HE.
• This does not mean that writing skills are poised to become less
important as AI tools start to more prominent.
Balance essays with other types of assessment
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40. • Designing assignments where students can demonstrate their
understanding (independent of written work) not just recite knowledge.
• Pen-and-paper exams are back for some. Whilst others are shifting
away from exams to more ‘authentic’ assessments (assessments that
evaluate real-world skills that students will employ in the workplace).
• Few workplaces require their employees to write detailed discussions of
difficult questions by hand, and without a computer.
• Viva’s require students to understand and communicate the ideas
they’ve defended in their essay (regardless if they are outsourced).
• Assignments that ask for deep research on recent developments are,
are relatively AI-resistant. But you need to continuously reviewed this.
Develop AI-resistant assessments
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41. • Ask students to:
• Include their personal experience or perspectives in their writing.
• Analyse a class discussions.
• Untangle a complex instruction that involve long texts that do not
fit a typical ChatGPT prompt, or
• Write about a very recent events (in the last week or so) that may
not be found in the ChatGPT database yet.
• But test it first
Set personalised, complex or topical tasks
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42. • Provide them the readings that they must use.
• Source these readings from Google Scholar or from University
Databases (closed journals)
• Submit a word version or use a common drive with version
history enabled
• Ask them to reflect on what they learned from doing an activity
(3-500 words max)
For Essays
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43. • Present questions using images, figures, or charts as auxiliary
information, and a nonspecific question as stem.
• For example, ‘which section of the figure below demonstrates. . . ?’
• Present auxiliary visuals as hotspot questions where the student
must click on an area of the image to indicate the correct answer
• For example, ‘select the area on the image which shows . . .’
• Present questions using a series of images, or a video
accompanied with conditional logic branching questions.
• For example, ‘at this point in the interaction, which question should
you ask the customer?’
Multiple choice?
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44. • Present questions that require the student to apply a concept
or principle to an up-to-date scenario or case study.
• For example, ‘the VOICE legislation to hold a referendum went through
parliament a while back, but there were those that spoke against it.
What are the implication of the dissenting voices?’
• Present the answer
• Then get student to choose the appropriate question.
Cont…
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45. • ChatGPT is not good at providing appropriate sources and quotations.
• So, engage students in writing practices focused on correcting factual
errors and locating accurate data sources (compare and contrast activity)
• Ask students cite and reference the work of others accurately and
properly by using in-text citations or including bibliography.
• Ask them to critique a piece of writing generated by ChatGPT by
analysing and interpreting how it conveys an idea and assessing its
strengths and weaknesses in terms of readability, credibility,
comprehensiveness, accuracy and so on.
Take advantage of AI’s shortcomings
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46. Industry partnerships
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• We are not keen on cannibalizing
our current programs
• Need to create new business
• Needs the alignment of VET and
HE through common skills
definitions

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Seek out good examples
https://app.secure.griffith.edu.au/exlnt/
https://transformingassessment.com

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Sharing and learning with others
• “We are all in this together”, so get connected
• Most people are very willing to share
• Let’s get mentoring
• Look for this from people you trust,
already know
• Lots of people are putting
stuff up for us to learn from
• But look for trusted sources
https://teledvisors.net/blog/
michael_sankey

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2 heads are better than one
https://towardsdatascience.com/the-old-saying-two-heads-are-better-than-one-4c7d133e16a4
https://www.copperbottom.net/blog/2016/11/7/why-two-heads-are-better-than-one
https://www.teachwire.net/news/two-heads-are-better-than-one-why-teachers-should-talk-to-their-tas
Partnering with design professionals