Tara Murray
A high-tech recording studio at La Trobe University that makes online lectures has been recognised in the Australian Financial Review’s Higher Education Awards.
The Lightboard Studio, that enables lecturers to produce engaging, broadcast-quality classes for students learning remotely, won the “Education Technology” category in this year’s awards.
Standing behind an illuminated glass screen or ‘lightboard’, lecturers can seemingly write mid-air with neon markers, and project dynamic graphics, including PowerPoint presentations.
Studio developer and senior physics lecturer at La Trobe University, Dr Russell Anderson said the studio offers a highly personal and engaging mode of delivery for students learning online.
“As lecturers, we’re not standing in front of a whiteboard or computer screen with our backs to the camera; we’re facing the students the whole time,” Dr Anderson said.
“Students are giving us really positive feedback – that it’s fun to watch and helps them grasp concepts more easily. So it’s really enhancing their online learning experience.”
Dr Anderson said the studio was developed in collaboration with Monash University, and although not in response to COVID-19, the timing could not have been better with the shift to remote learning.
Another La Trobe project, the Freely Accessible Remote Laboratories (FARLabs), developed by senior physics lecturer David Hoxley, was shortlisted for the awards, in the “Learning Experience” category.
Meanwhile, La Trobe student Lucy Treloar has won the Barbara Jefferis Award for her novel Wolfe Island.
Ms Treloar wrote Wolfe Island, which is set on a sinking island, in a country riven by racial violence and social inequity, as part her PhD in creative writing at La Trobe.
Ms Treloar said the award affirmed the importance of women in literature as strong, central and empowered characters.
“There is sometimes a tendency to feel that the writing world has recognised the place of women in writing, and that equality has been achieved. Yet there is still a tendency for books about women to revolve around men, for books by women to be more popular and successful if they’re about men, and for men to be more willing to read books by and about men, though this is to some extent changing,” Ms Treloar said.
Wolfe Island is also shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, due to be announced soon.
