Awards

Virtual Simulation in Optometry team: Ms Amanda Edgar, Professor James Armitage, Dr Ryan Wood-Bradley, Ms Nadeeka Arambeweka-Colley, Dr Luke Chong, Associate Professor Susie Macfarlane and Jane Kiddell

For their leadership and excellence in education in the optometry field, through an innovative virtual practice simulation. This program promotes evidence-based practice and clinical reasoning through immersive learning.

Deakin’s Learning and Automation in Accounting team: Dr Peter Vuong, Dr Egor Evdokimov and Dr Lawrence Huang

For revolutionising foundational accounting education at Deakin. The team developed individualised assessment and feedback automation that significantly enhanced student engagement and academic performance.

Alfred Deakin Professor David Boud
This prestigious award recognises Professor Boud, Foundation Director of the Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning (CRADLE), as one of Australia’s most exceptional educators and educational leaders.

Professor Boud is also Emeritus Professor at the University of Technology Sydney and Professor of Work and Learning at Middlesex University. He is Australia’s most internationally renowned educational researcher in higher education. He is a global leader and pre-eminent scholar in his fields of higher and professional education, workplace learning, and assessment and feedback which has led to reforms across the Australian and global higher education sector.

Learning in Mathematics team: Dr Kerri Morgan, Ms Laura Tubino, A/Prof Julien Ugon, Dr Simon James and A/Prof Andrew Cain
For motivating and inspiring students from diverse mathematical backgrounds through innovative assessment practices and learning experiences that foster student agency.

A/Prof Melissa O’Shea
For leveraging leadership and excellence in the field of clinical psychology, visioning and delivering a curriculum that promotes work-ready contemporary clinical psychology graduates.

Business Analytics team: Dr Reza Kachouie and Mr Stephen Williams
For transformation of a foundation business analytics unit through implementation of an active learning approach, leading to students’ improved analytical skills and employability.

Accounting Capstone for Employability team: Dr Christine Contessotto, Dr Edwin Lim and Associate Professor Luckmika Perera

For excellence in the development of an innovative capstone curricula in accounting which allows the scaffolding of employability skills embedded within authentic learning activities and assessments.

Globally Ready Conservation Graduates team: A/Prof John White, A/Prof Raylene Cooke and A/Prof Mike Weston
This award recognises the team’s outstanding contribution to the quality of student learning and experience in higher education. The team have demonstrated excellent leadership in the field of Global Citizenship and Internationalisation through commitment to innovation and quality teaching. This sustained program addresses the core global need to create skilled, capable and resilient graduates in conservation biology, with more than 350 participants benefitting from it over the last 10 years.

International Students to Responsible IS Professional team: Dr Craig Parker and A/Prof Harsh Suri
For motivating and providing scaffolded guidance to international students in developing knowledge, skills and confidence to seek career opportunities and become responsible information systems professionals.

Professional Literacy Suite team: Ms Simone Tyrell, A/Prof Kerrie Bridson, Dr Leanne Ngo, Ms Kim Phu, Ms Sharon Chua, Dr Micaela Spiers and A/Prof Michael Volkov
For constructing digital learning resources, across the student journey, within a business school context, to support and motivate students to strengthen their professional literacy competency.

Risk Aware team: Ms Amanda Dudley, A/Prof Jade Sheen, A/Prof Wendy Sutherland-Smith, Prof Jane McGillivray, Prof Reg Nixon (Flinders University), A/Prof Rachel Roberts (University of Adelaide), Dr Michael, Proeve (University of Adelaide), Prof Debra Dunstan (University of New England), A/Prof Carmela Pestell (University of Western Australia) and Dr Louse Alexander (Australian Catholic University).

This award recognises the team’s outstanding contribution to the quality of student learning and experience clinical placement settings. The team developed Risk Aware, a national, online education program that assists healthcare students to better identify and manage the risks associated with clinical placement. Developed through strong partnerships with six universities and one industry partner, Risk Aware provides highly innovative and authentic learning experiences that enhance student workplace readiness and risk-related competence, with modules addressing various areas of risk such as aggression, physical violence, psychological and emotional risk. Risk Aware is the first program of its type in Australia to comprehensively address placement risks unique to healthcare students and represents this team’s commitment to high quality education through collaboration and partnership.

Activate Minecraft for Agile team: A/Prof Bardo Fraunholz, Mr Vivek Venkiteswaran, Ms Emma Simpfendorfer, Mr Kane Hooper, Mr Toby Durden and Mr Alister Air
For designing digital learning resources and a game-based simulated environment to teach Agile Project Management in a business school context, enhanced by aligned industry engagement.

Graduate Certificate, Education Business Leadership team: Mr Mark Donehue, Ms Joanne Henriksen, Ms Katrina Broadhead, Ms Alex Singleton, Mr Matt McDonough and Ms Kim Neilson
For an innovative program in Education Business Leadership that inspires students to develop business acumen and addresses equity issues for professional staff in education.

A/Prof Kelly Miller
For the development of an innovative Work Integrated Learning micro-credential in environmental sustainability as part of a coherent and constructively aligned WIL curriculum.

Occupational Therapy Simulations for Learning Team: Ms Kelli Nicola-Richmond, Ms Valerie Watchorn, Mr Peter Lane and Mr Anthony Neylan
For sustained excellence in the development and application of an innovative, high-quality, authentic learning resource that enhances the clinical skills of occupational therapy students.

FXAP (Foreign Exchange Authentic Practice) Team: A/Prof Victor Fang, Dr Sohel Azad, Dr Vincent Xiang and Dr Sharon Pittaway
For sustained authentic, experiential learning experiences that motivate and inspire finance students to learn in an innovative learning and teaching space.

Deakin Interprofessional Education Team, Mrs Sherryn Evans, Mrs Catherine Ward and Ms Nicole Shaw
For developing, implementing and sustaining a globally unique, wholly online, interprofessional education unit for students from seven different health professions.

Dr Glenn Wadley
For leadership in implementing a suite of innovative active-learning approaches that have enhanced student learning in undergraduate physiology and in Honours research training.

Dr Jaclyn Broadbent
Jaclyn is an early career academic who is recognised nationally and internationally for her sustained and innovative leadership in delivering engaging, accessible and authentic curricula to students in large first year classes. To give students the optimum learning experience, she uses various technologies to provide timely, high quality, and meticulously moderated feedback. 

Her work in this area is informed by the rigorous application of scholarly theory and ongoing evaluation. Initially, Jaclyn applied this approach to her own large cohorts of 2000+ first-year students, however, her expertise has been recognised outside Deakin and her approaches have been adopted by tertiary institutions across Australia. She is recognised globally as a leader in the use of the Brightspace Learning Management System (LMS) and its embedded affordances, and continues to provide feedback to international providers to improve the use of intelligent agents and feedback for sustained student engagement in learning. 

Jaclyn’s influence and work have been recognised by numerous teaching and learning awards at Deakin 2008-2013, nationally (a 2012 OLT Citation) and internationally (a 2014 Desire2Learn International Teaching Impact Award).

Dr Tony Joel
Dr Tony Joel excels in creating and sharing high support/high challenge learning environments that are constructively aligned to enhance students’ learning experiences and outcomes. Through a rich blend of authentic learning activities Tony motivates and inspires History students to use their naturally inquisitive minds to better develop their knowledge and understanding of how the past continues to shape the world in which we live. 

Tony arranges imaginative and indeed confrontational learning opportunities that invite students to engage with the “living past,” such as the annual weekend seminar he conducts at Melbourne’s Jewish Holocaust Centre where his students become historical custodians through meeting with survivors. An exponent of the teaching-­‐research nexus, Tony draws on his discipline expertise, international field research, and advanced interactive media strategies to build curricula and resources that foster enquiry-­‐based learning. His inventive assessments encourage students to learn and apply transferable skills directly linked to the University’s designated graduate learning outcomes. 

Tony has represented Deakin in national projects, and through leadership roles as Associate Head of School (Teaching and Learning) and Course Director of the Bachelor of Arts his impact on enhancing students’ learning experiences and outcomes has extended well beyond his discipline.

• QS Wharton Reimagine Education global awards – innovative higher education pedagogies enhancing learning and employability

• Gold Global prize for ICT Support and Services for The Deakin Watson initiative

• Bronze Oceania award for Deakin Anywhere

Dr Gery Karantzas, Faculty of Health

Dr Gery Karantzas has enhanced the learning outcomes of over 10,000 undergraduate students in the discipline of psychology. Gery’s teaching reflects innovative, cutting-edge practice that has established him as a national leader in teaching and learning. He has created rich, immersive, inquiry-based learning experiences that enhance student motivation for learning, resulting in demonstrable improvements in students’ development of psychology graduate attributes.

Dr Mike Weston, Faculty of Science Engineering and Built Environment

Dr Mike Weston draws upon almost two decades of industry experience in environmental science to inspire and motivate students, and to create learning experiences that are authentic and topical. As Course Director, Mike leads the Bachelor of Environmental Science (Wildlife and Conservation Biology), a popular and growing course with high levels of student satisfaction and innovation.

Norma Barrett, Faculty of Health

For excellence in developing coherent and imaginative digital learning resources that transform how thousands of students critically assess and interpret health information and statistics.

Dr Jade Sheen, Dr Clint Gurtman, Professor Jane McGillivray, Faculty of Health

The Deakin Psychiatric Simulation Program created by this team uses simulation-based teaching and authentic assessment methods to enhance mental health education.

Governor of Victoria Export Awards

Deakin University was named Education and Training Provider of the Year in 2015.

Excellence in Research for Australia is a comprehensive quality evaluation of all research produced in Australian universities against national and international benchmarks.

Deakin’s ERA 2015 results show a significant improvement over the 2010 and 2012 results, with the numbers of fields of research rated at or above world standard increasing from 47% in 2010 to 89% in 2015.

By subject, in the Excellence in Research for Australia national assessment Deakin received the top ranking of 5, defined as well above world standards, in:

• macromolecular and materials chemistry
• environmental science and management
• zoology
• materials engineering
• human movement and sports science
• medical microbiology
• neurosciences
• nutrition and dietetics
• pharmacology and pharmaceutical sciences
• medical physiology.

• The title of Alfred Deakin Professor is the highest honour Deakin can bestow on its academics, with Professor Mirko Bagaric (Business and Law), Professor Neil Barnett (Science, Engineering and Built Environment), Professor Colin Barrow (Science, Engineering and Built Environment) and Professor Ian Chen (Science, Engineering and Built Environment) honoured in 2015.
• Australian Laureate Fellow Professor Maria Forsyth was elected to the Australian Academy of Science in 2015.
• Deakin Distinguished Professor David Lowe, Chair in Contemporary History, was elected to the Australian Academy of Social Sciences in 2015.
• Professor Michael Berk was awarded the 2015 Brain and Behaviour Research Foundation Colvin Prize for Bipolar Mood Disorder Research and the 2015 Founders Medal by the Society for Mental Health Research.
• Professor Paresh Narayan,was awarded the Mahalanobis Memorial Medal (International) for the year 2014. This award is issued once every four years and acknowledges an outstanding contribution to economics.
• Ecologist Dr Emily Nicholson from the School of Life and Environmental Sciences is an inaugural VESKI Inspiring Women Fellow, a program acknowledging outstanding women in science and innovative technology.
• Five Deakin researchers (Professor David Crawford, Professor Kylie Ball, Professor Jo Salmon, Professor Michael Berk and Professor Anna Timperio) were identified in the Thomson Reuters 2015 list of Highly Cited Researchers.