Happy holidays: CRADLE year in review 2020
16 December 2020
It’s hard to believe that 2020, a year that feels like it’s lasted 37 months, is finally drawing to a close. It’s been a challenging year as we’ve adjusted to working from home, social distancing, hours of Zoom meetings, homeschooling, a rapid pivot to emergency remote learning, lockdowns and curfews, shifting events online, separation from family and friends, and so much uncertainty. While we’re lucky here in Australia to be experiencing relative normality for the moment, we know many of our friends around the world are still facing challenging times ahead.
But the year hasn’t been all bad – we’ve learnt new ways of working, explored different ways of collaborating, expanded means of participating, and discovered new capabilities. We’ve put together some of the year’s highlights, along with the top CRADLE News posts for 2020, to recognise the many great achievements for CRADLE this year. Take care this holiday break – we’ll be back with more news, events and research in 2021!
Highlights of 2020
Despite the chaos of 2020, there have been plenty of amazing achievements for CRADLE staff and students this year. Congratulations all!
- We made it (well, we’re nearly there), despite everything 2020 had to throw at us! Along the way, we gave over 40 presentations, seminars, keynotes and workshops – nearly all were presented online, but ‘locations’ included Australia, UK, Ireland, Chile and Singapore.
- Our Director, Alfred Deakin Professor David Boud, was named the world’s top researcher in higher education for the second year running, as measured by Google Scholar.
- Our Associate Director, A/Prof. Phillip Dawson, won’t be A/Prof. for much longer… he’s achieved academic promotion to Professor. He also published a new book, Defending Assessment Security in a Digital World: Preventing E-Cheating and Supporting Academic Integrity in Higher Education, which is both Phill’s and CRADLE’s first ‘authored’ book (that is, not an edited volume).
- Prof. Margaret Bearman published her new novel, We Were Never Friends, to critical acclaim, and she even got to launch it before Melbourne’s first lockdown! Plus she discovered that there’s a public park hidden inside Caulfield racecourse while on a lockdown walk with Dr Joanna Tai.
- A/Prof. Rola Ajjawi was named as Australia’s leading researcher in science and engineering education. And no, she hasn’t switched fields – medical education was categorised under ‘Education, scientific disciplines’ for these rankings. She also keynoted the National Symposium on Work-based Assessment (Ireland) in November (recording available here) and was invited to join the Editorial Board of Teaching in Higher Education.
- Dr Joanna Tai led a successful NCSEHE grant that will explore inclusive assessment design in exams; plus, she hit the 2000 followers mark on Twitter.
- We graduated our first PhD student, Dr Sarah Lambert!
- CRADLE PhD student Lincoln Then James passed his PhD confirmation colloquium.
- We welcomed new CRADLE PhD students Habiba Fadel and Tegan Miller.
- We responded to the shift to emergency remote teaching with practical resources on: shifting exams and assessments online; academic integrity and assessment security for digital assessment; strategies for using online invigilated exams; and preventing contract cheating in an online environment.
- And, last but not least… We hosted our first-ever CRADLE conference, entirely online! Maybe we could have picked a better year for our inaugural conference but – after an emergency switch to a fully virtual conference earlier this year, plenty of planning, and lots of behind-the-scenes logistical scrambling – we ended up with an amazing conference that was bigger and better than we’d ever anticipated. There were over 1000 registrations from 245 different institutions across 38 countries, including every Australian state and territory and every continent except Antarctica, and conference sessions have been viewed over 3600 times across live sessions and recordings. If you took part, thanks for making CRADLE Conference 2020 such a success!
Most read in 2020
It’s been another bumper year for CRADLE News, with more visitors than ever before and from every continent except Antarctica (we really must work on growing our audience down there). This year, with the shift to emergency remote teaching and online assessment, academic integrity and practical resources proved popular with our readers, as did useful tips from the CRADLE team on everything from understanding Google Metrics to writing 75,000 words in seven weeks. The topics of feedback and evaluative judgement also remain perennial favourites.
- Sword vs Bukowski, or how I wrote a 75,000-word book in seven weeks
Our most popular read for 2020! If you need some writing inspiration, check out A/Prof. Phillip Dawson’s account of writing his recent book, Defending Assessment Security in a Digital World. Phill outlines the four simple and practical steps he used, which can be adapted to any type of writing you need to get done – whether it’s a report, a journal article, a chapter or even a whole book on your holiday to-do list! - Cheating and COVID-19: some CRADLE suggestions
With the rapid shift to emergency remote teaching earlier this year, new concerns about academic integrity and assessment security emerged. We put together a two-page resource for our CRADLE suggests… series with practical suggestions for addressing cheating in online learning, drawn from research from CRADLE and the broader literature. - Latest developments in feedback research
Feedback research and publications continue to evolve at a lively rate, with CRADLE and its associates at the forefront of developments over the past few months. This post from CRADLE Honorary Professor David Carless offers an overview of selected recent developments in feedback research. Only a few weeks old and already racing up our most-read charts! - A look at Google Scholar metrics
We all use Google Scholar, but what on earth do its metrics actually mean? It seems a lot of people have the same question, judging by the popularity of this post from Dr Joanna Tai! Jo digs through the data to demystify Google Scholar’s metrics system – she explains how best to use these metrics, and also takes a look at how CRADLE went in the 2019 metrics. - Evaluative judgement: What, why & how? CRADLE Seminar Series
In one of our most popular seminars from 2019, Jo explored what evaluative judgement is, why it’s important for our students, and how it can be developed. This seminar recap from CRADLE PhD student Juan Fischer remains a hit with our readers, and views of the recording make this seminar one of our most-watched. - Suggestions for using remote proctored exams
They’ve been around (and controversial) for a while but, in the current pandemic context, remote proctored exams are a hotter topic than ever before. So, if you do need to use an invigilated online exam, be sure to check out Phill’s ten practical suggestions for making the most of the format while addressing the potential risks and harms. - “What do you think they’re going to do to me?” Student experiences of formal academic integrity processes
What does a sitcom have to do with academic integrity? Find out in this post by Deakin University Student Association senior advocate Dr Penelope Pitt, as she outlines the surprising parallels between a poolside academic integrity hearing in an episode of Community, and the experiences of a group rarely heard from in academic integrity research – students who face an allegation of cheating.
International visitors to the blog in 2020
