Award Highlights Innovative Community

ANN ARBOR, Mich. - April 15, 2015 - PRLog -- From the University of Oxford to the University of Hawaii at Hilo, Sakai is being used to provide innovative learning opportunities for diverse groups of learners. That's the lesson to learn from this years ‘Teaching With Sakai Innovation Awards’. The annual awards showcase the efforts of a vibrant and diverse international community dedicated to improving the quality of technology enhanced learning with open source software.

This year’s winners are -

Higher Ed Face to Face category:
Entry: Survey of Psychology
Alexander Nagurney (Instructor), University of Hawaii at Hilo
Patrick Smith (Instructional Designer) Texas State University
“Effectively implementing a game-based, or “gamified” approach to instruction can seem like an overwhelming task for educators…but does it have to be? For this project, Dr. Alexander Nagurney, from University of Hawaii at Hilo, and Patrick Smith, from Texas State University, collaborated to determine if implementing simple, game-based elements into a traditional higher education instructional model would improve student attendance, performance, and satisfaction. They designed and delivered a gamified design of a freshman level Psychology course against its non-gamified counterpart, and are excited to share their experiences, as well as discuss implications for future offerings.”

Higher Ed Online/Hybrid category:
Entry: Population Health for Graduate Nursing Students
Catherine Ling (Assistant Professor) Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences Daniel K Inouye Graduate School of Nursing
“The Population Health course for the Doctorate of Nursing Practice students at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences uses Sakai to provide a fully online class focused on student engagement and application on the content. This course emphasizes provision of a solid understanding of key principles and engages students in the application of those principles through debate, creative scenarios, and small group work using almost every facet of Sakai.”

Entry: Conservation Statistics
Lucy Tallents (Post-doctoral Research Officer) University of Oxford
“Wildlife conservationists in the developing world are the keepers of biodiversity, yet they lack access to training in research techniques to support their valuable work. By studying online they don’t need to interrupt their work or pay the costs of overseas travel. This Sakai course is full of team activities and engaging learning materials. Students from around the world work together to learn how solutions developed on a different continent can help species in their local area. Feedback from their tutor and fellow students helps them to assess their attempts to save species, using scientific methods to improve their approach.”

K-12 category:
Entry: Sakai Small World Project
Juan Felipe Gómez Nicholls, (LATAM Regional Representative), Colegio Mas Camarena, Spain and Colegio Arrayanes, Colombia and Asahi Net International
“Sakai Small World is a project that intends to improve basic education including intercultural interaction between children from 10 to 15 years old using Sakai. The project started on February 12th and is currently in progress. Our intention is to conduct a pilot with two K-12 colleges, the college Mas Camarena in Spain and the college Arrayanes in Colombia. The main objective of the activities is to let children know other places through the eyes of a foreign partner with Sakai help. The final activity is to build a social campaign about cultural diversity in groups.”

The intent of the award is to highlight examples of educational applications of Sakai which fall into an innovative or transformative category.

Each of the winners will be recognized for their use of the Sakai CLE, or Apereo OAE, for teaching and learning, at the Apereo Conference in Baltimore, MD, May 31-June 4, 2015.  Details of their winning projects will be shared at the conference. For information about the conference, go to http://conference.apereo.org/

The Teaching with Sakai Innovation Award (TWSIA) is a project of the Sakai Teaching and Learning Community.

We thank our sponsor Asahi Net International (ANI) for their support of the Teaching With Sakai Innovation Award.