The Award

The EUNIS Dørup E-learning Award was founded by the EUNIS Board in commemoration of former member of the EUNIS Board of Directors, Jens Dørup. The award is given for the outstanding and innovative application of information technology (IT) in an educational setting in higher education.

The award was handed out for the first time at EUNIS 2008 in Aarhus. This first award session and ceremony took place at the University of Aarhus - very appropriately the workplace for late Jens Dørup for more than 25 years.

Judging criteria

The award will go to an innovative way of using existing or new information technologies to enhance learning. The project must combine innovation, pedagogy and technology as key factors for creating more effective and engaging learning. Evidence to show the benefits will be essentials.

Submissions to the Dørup E-learning Award are judged by the following 4 criteria:

Innovation

An implementation of the project must have taken place and the ways in which it is innovative and different from other e-learning implementations should be described.

Pedagogy

The project must clearly demonstrate the involvement of a pedagogical idea or educational objectives. The pedagogical foundation must be presented as well as how the IT-enhanced learning activities are aligned with or connected to other learning activities.

Technology

The information technology/technologies used can be proprietary, open source, a web 2.0/social software application or self-developed, but the choice of technology must be explained as well as how this technology gives an added value to the specific teaching and learning activities.

Usefulness and benefits of the innovation

Applicants must submit some form of evidence of the benefits. Benefits might include improvements in following areas (although other types of benefits will be considered): Recruitment and Retention; Skills and Employability; Student Achievement; Widening Participation and Social Justice; Support for students with Special Needs .Types of evidence to show the benefits have been achieved might include: case studies; exam results; internal and external evaluations; student feedback and focus groups; system logs or other statistics and anecdotal evidence from both students and staff.

Rules for submission

1. The submitter’s organisation must be a member of EUNIS.
2. The submitter or a member of the team involved must be able to participate in the annual EUNIS congress.
3. You should only submit a project that has been entered in previous years if there have been significant developments since your last paper.

Submission procedure and deadlines for 2011

In order to enter for the 2011 Award you should submit an abstract for the conference via the conference website taking care to follow the particular instructions for the Award:

Submission and deadlines.

Inducation of intention to submit abstract/paper 31st January 2011

Abstract submission 28th February 2011

Notification of shortlisted candidates 31 March 2011

Full paper submission 30th April 2011

Author Registration 15 May 2011

You should tick the box to say that you wish to be entered for the Dørup Award.

Your abstract should follow the Award template to ensure you address the judging criteria.

We require a fuller submission than a standard abstract as the information will be used to shortlist candidates for the Award.

Shortlisted candidates will then be invited to submit a full paper which will be entered into the judging for the Dørup Award.

Shortlisted candidates will be invited to present their papers in a special Dørup Award session where the winner will be announced.

Shortlisted candidates will be notified before the early bird registration deadline.

Candidates who have provided high quality abstracts but who are not shortlisted for the Award will be invited to submit a full paper that will be timetabled in other e–Learning themed sessions throughout the programme.

All abstracts and papers will be published in online form.  

Award

The award is not a monetary award, but the winner of the award will have his/her conference fee refunded by EUNIS and will receive a special certificate.

Tips from the judges

The judges will find it helpful if you structure your abstract and paper so that the judging criteria are clearly addressed. Your abstract should use the criteria as headings. 

We are particularly interested in the use of technology to support active engagement of learners. If your paper concerns a learning object or learning platform you should specify the types of activities developed around this. 

We are interested in the innovative use of technology. You may enter a paper about a well–established technology so long as you are using it in an innovative way.

Winners

2008

University of Zagreb, Croatia: E–tivities With a Wiki: E–tivities With a Wiki: Innovative Teaching of English as a Foreign Language

2009

University of Southampton, Enhancing Learning Using Synchronised Multimedia Annotation

2010

No Award made for technical reasons. Special commendation given for papers from University of Zagreb, Croatia, University of Reading, UK, Vaasa University of Applied Sciences, Finland