Our services

Educational Innovation helpdesk

The Educational Innovation Helpdesk supports the University of Sydney staff to make effective use of institution-wide digital teaching platforms, applications, and processes.

We respond to requests for support in the use of the University learning management system and associated integrated platforms. We work closely with staff in faculties and schools to manage Canvas unit of study sites by providing just-in-time help, a consultation service, or by referring staff to other support services self-help resources and other support services available within and through the University.

Staff can contact the EI Helpdesk for support with Canvas, Echo360, EdStem, Gradescope, Mentimeter, Padlet, PebblePad, SEAMS, SRES, and Turnitin and other integrated software.

The EI Helpdesk is a support service for immediate help. For teaching and learning advice or support with educational design staff can book a 1:1 consultation with a member of the Educational Innovation team. For more complex unit of study projects, staff can request support through the Educational Design Accelerator program.

Educational design consults

For teaching and learning advice and support or design challenges, book a 1:1 consultation with a member of the Educational Innovation team. These 30-minute sessions are open to all academic and professional colleagues involved in educational delivery or support.

Offerings include:

• teaching and assessment foundations (for those new to assessment)
• teaching and assessment extension (for more complex assessment questions)
• artificial Intelligence in Education
• educational video design and recording
• engaging and relating with the Student Relationship Engagement System (SRES)
• designing for diversity
• using the Educational Innovation DIY video and audio recording booth
• consult with a Learning Management System administrator.

Educational design accelerator

We collaborate with you, as the unit coordinator, to help you address a finite learning and teaching issue in an undergraduate or postgraduate coursework unit. We assemble a small team of educational designers and developers, from Educational Innovation and your faculty or school, to work with you over a few weeks/months. Our aim is to enable you to yield a solution that is practical and sustainable and which you can quickly implement. Our approach is guided by Sydney’s core pedagogical principles and designing for diversity. During peak times, we prioritise projects based on scale and impact.

We can help you to:

• address a teaching/learning barrier
• rethink an assessment
• try some engaging student activities
• make media resources for your teaching
• use educational technology to support your learning goals
• develop ways to measure the impact of your design

Read about recent EDA examples.

Educational media

Educational Innovation provides support for both professional and DIY approaches to creating educational media.

The EI media team can help you make your professional educational videos. We collaborate with you across the whole process from the initial planning and scripting, through to recording and editing. We make many different styles of videos; interview, welcome, lecture/presentation, how to/demonstration, screencast, lightboard, role-play and animated. We can shoot specialised video techniques such as slow-motion, timelapse, drone and macro. We also have experience with 360-degree video & infrared cameras.

We record in our studio, and on location on campus. Our studio is in the Education Building and is equipped with lighting, cameras, microphones, greenscreen and teleprompter and we have recently added a lightboard, which is a whiteboard made of glass.

We treat video making as a truly collaborative process; we can provide guidance and we will make suggestions, but we are always open to new ideas. Our aim is to make the entire process as simple and enjoyable as possible for everyone involved. We like to keep things low stress when recording and we are experienced at helping people feel relaxed in front of the camera so they can give their best performance.

There is no charge for videos we make for internal use in Sydney University courses, but there may be a charge if it is for an external audience, or if it is an exceptionally large project.

DIY recording booth and media kits

We also provide equipment and spaces on campus to help you produce your own educational media.

The DIY recording booth is a purpose built mini studio in the Education Building on the Camperdown campus and it is available to all University staff. You can use it to record a variety of presentation formats like talking head lectures, screencasts, pen-casts, podcasts, and two-person interviews.

Staff can also borrow a DIY media kit to record at your own pace and space. The kits are available to help you record media on your own computer (e.g. presentations, two-person interviews, screencasts, podcasts). There are also on-location kits to help you film on-the-go using your own mobile device (e.g. demonstrations, vox-pop interviews etc).

In-house self-serve resources

The Knowledge Base hosted on ServiceNow provides guidance on using Sydney University’s educational technologies.

The Teaching Resources Hub helps you with planning and managing your in-class teaching, assessment design, student engagement, or supporting the first-year experience.

Learning space development

The DVC (Education) oversees more than 900 formal learning spaces across campus. Ensuring these spaces meet our teaching and learning needs is a critical part of what we do. We work closely with colleagues in University Infrastructure and Central Operations Services to care for and develop the built environment for learning at Sydney. Informal learning spaces are managed by Library Services, and we are currently partnering with them on the development of a model of informal space management based on their peer-support network.

Student Relationship Engagement System (SRES)

The Student Relationship Engagement System (SRES) helps teachers to personalise engagement with large student cohorts. Teachers consistently report positive feedback from students, which “shows how helpful SRES is in allowing us to give the kind of personalised attention to students that time wouldn’t otherwise allow”. From helping to mark attendance, analyse grades, collect live feedback, and provide easy ways to personalise feedback at scale, SRES gives teachers access to data that are meaningful in their contexts and helps them to create personalised learning environments with targeted feedback and support.

Cogniti

Create steerable and accurate agents powered by generative AI. Cogniti is designed to let teachers build custom chatbot agents that can be given specific instructions, and specific resources, to assist student learning in context-sensitive ways. Cogniti is designed by educators, and built by educators, to empower educators with generative AI.