Untitled Document

Professor Sandra Wills

Director of the Centre for Educational Development & Interactive Resources
University of Wollongong, Australia

Some videos and PowerPoints of the keynote speech have been put on the "Summary and Archive". Please click here.

http://www.uow.edu.au/cedir/about/staff/swills.html

Keynote address
Enroll in new designs for learning: Online Role Plays
Sandra has tracked the growth of educational role plays in Australian universities over 15 years. Online role plays are designed to increase understanding of real life human interaction and dynamics:

participants assume a role in someone else's shoes or in someone else's situation
to do authentic tasks in an authentic context
involving substantial in-role human interaction such as collaboration, negotiation, debate
interaction between roles is substantially in an online environment
learning outcomes are assessable and generate opportunities for student reflection.

In this presentation, Sandra will:

showcase a number of examples of ONLINE and BLENDED role plays being used in Australian universities
review some the challenges and issues faced by teachers and students using online role play
outline the generic learning design for online role plays to assist you to begin designing your own role play.

Biography
Sandra has been Director at UOW for 14 years. Her major project for the past four years has been to develop the University's Strategic Plan for eLearning and Teaching along with implementing a new Learning Management System. She has over 30 years international experience in the field of education and technology from primary through to university education including teacher training, curriculum development, software development and senior management. She has authored close to 150 publications, is active on the international lecture circuit, and has recently delivered her 100th invited keynote address. She has attracted more than $2.5 million in grants and consultancies in her career plus $9 million for a Cooperative Multimedia Centre, Impart. Her current research area is online role play, learning designs and learning objects, for example, a $500,000 collaborative national project on Learning Designs (2001-2003) funded by the Australian Universities Teaching Committee, has been followed by a $200,000 Carrick Institute grant for Project EnRoLE: Encouraging Role-based Learning Environments.

Sandra was elected a Fellow of the Australian Computer Society (ACS) in 1991 and a Fellow of the Australian Council for Computers in Education in 2002. Awards include ACS Lecturer of the Year and an IFIP International Silver Core for long-term service to computers in education as chair of several national and international conferences, boards and committees.