Teaching Innovation Awards Highlight Next Generation of Digital Learning

NEW YORK - May 11, 2016 - PRLog -- Recipients of the ATLAS teaching awards will be center stage at this month's Open Apereo conference, to be held May 22-25 at the NYU Washington Square Campus.

First place is awarded to Marcella Oliviero and Andrea Zhok, from the University of Bristol in the UK, who featured a project-based learning approach to teaching Italian that made heavy use of student-created content.

Alexander Nagurney, University of Hawaii at Hilo, and Patrick Smith, Texas State University, received an award for their Social Psychology course. This combines real world problem solving with game-based learning activities, to deliver a course in which the students communicated more frequently, thoughtfully, and collaboratively.

Leanne Scott, and Stefan Britz, of the University of Cape Town, won an award for integrating online and conventional teaching for a large introductory statistics course. Carefully scripted combinations of online and face-to-face resources have significantly energized student engagement and participation.

Michael Feldstein, a leading ed-tech blogger and commentator, will keynote open Apereo 2016 and present the awards. The central theme of the conference is the role of open technologies in building the next generation of flexible online learning environments.

About Apereo

The Apereo Foundation is a non-profit registered in New Jersey that sustains software supporting learning, teaching and research. Apereo works within a global network, with member institutions on six continents. We seek to actively develop partnerships to further our mission of creating and sustaining open source software supporting learning, teaching and research. Our partnership with our sister organisation, the ESUP-Portail consortium in France, creates a network of over 180 higher educational institutions and partners - a network where higher education can share experiences, learn from the experiences of others, and discover new collaborators.

About the ATLAS Awards

The Apereo Teaching and Learning Awards recognize teaching innovation using open technologies. 2016 is the inaugural year of the awards, which build on the Teaching With Sakai Innovation Awards.