WMIER Researcher wins best paper award
Date / Time: 20 April 2016
A Best Paper award from the DEANZ Association’s (now known as Flexible Learning Association of New Zealand, FLANZ) flagship journal- the Journal of Open, Flexible, Distance Learning- was presented to Dr Elaine Khoo (Senior Research Fellow at the Wilf Malcolm Institute of Educational Research) in recognition of the scientific merit for her paper titled “Software Literacy and student learning in the tertiary environment: PowerPoint and beyond”. The award was presented by the journal’s Associate Editor, Dr Maggie Hartnett, during the conference dinner held at Hobbiton Movie Set on 19th April 2016. The paper stems from a Teaching and Learning Research Initiative funded project exploring the notion of software literacy and how it develops and impacts on the teaching, learning and student experience of knowledge generation, communication, critique and use in engineering and media studies. Research team members of the project who contributed to the paper were Assoc Prof Craig Hight, Prof Bronwen Cowie, Dr Rob Torrens and Lisabeth Ferrarelli. The award was one of two presented by the Journal’s Editorial team in recognition of quality papers submitted to the journal since the last conference held in 2014.
The DEANZ2016 conference, held from 17 - 20 April, is New Zealand’s premier conference in open, online, flexible and mobile learning and was hosted at the University of Waikato in Hamilton with the conference dinner at Hobbiton Movie Set. Over 200 delegates from within New Zealand and overseas gathered to share key research and practice ideas relating to the conference theme, “There and back: Charting flexible pathways in open, mobile and distance education” which was inspired by Hamilton’s close proximity to the Hobbiton in the Waikato. It attracted cross-sector participation from educators and trainers from the early childhood, primary, secondary, tertiary and vocational sectors.