University’s Open Knowledge Environment project wins major award

June 05, 2012

Athabasca University has won Campus Technology magazine's 2012 Innovator's Award in the category of Leadership, Governance and Policy. The award was given for the university's groundbreaking Open Knowledge Environment project, which was partly funded by the federal government's Knowledge Infrastructure Project (KIP) with matching funding from the Province of Alberta.

Three years ago, the university committed to moving toward to becoming a fully online virtual organization and developed an IT capital plan to accomplish this. The goal of AU's IT capital plan is to create a flexible, rich and collaborative working and learning environment with innovative new tools based on a new fully digital online infrastructure.

The Open Knowledge Environment project ran between June 2009 and October 2011 was the first step in that transformation process. More than 30 initiatives were mounted to enhance the university's technology infrastructure and upgrade skill sets and IT processes across the entire institution.

Brian Stewart, AU's Vice-president of Information Technology and Chief Information Officer, says the project's relatively short timeline helped create a powerful "change" dynamic. "The available funding gave the university only about two years in which to enact changes," Stewart said, "and that provided the shot in the arm to follow through with concrete programs. It created a dynamic and the impetus to move forward."

The project greatly speeded the development of the university's infrastructure, including desktop virtualization, synchronous web conferencing, research collaboration, tutor portal, VOIP communications, course content management, online assessment, student program planning, and course evaluation.

These are enabling new learning tools to be advanced and current initiatives being explored by AU include learning and academic analytics, simulation, gaming, immersive environments, and visualizations, as well as synchronous conferencing, social networking, collaboration technologies, and the use and creation of open education resources (OERs), areas of expansion that will reflect the all-digital environment.

The goal, says Stewart, is to "provide a rich, digital and adaptive environment that will best serve our students, our faculty and our staff as we move fully into the online realm."

For more information, go here or contact:

John O'Brien
Manager, Communications and Media Relations
403-298-2931
403-990-1131 (cell)
jobrien@athabascau.ca
Twitter: @MediaAU

 

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Updated August 21, 2012