The ALPS project has been nominated for the 'Innovation Award' in the Tertiary, FE & HE category at the 2009 Handheld Learning Awards. This follows the recent nomination for the ALPS project for the 'Best use of mobile learning' award at the e-Learning Awards 2009.
There are five categories at the 2009 Handheld Learning Awards plus a special award:
Primary
Secondary
Further and Tertiary
Training and Business
Special Needs
Votes can be sent by SMS by texting ALPS to +44 7786 205 637. SMS charges vary according to operator but this is a non-premium rate service so your contract may include free SMS. The deadline for voting is midnight UK time on Monday 28th September.
Winners will be announced at the now legendary evening awards party on Monday 5th October. This year's Awards will be hosted by Jason Bradbury.
The ALPS project is a service platform allowing tutors at five Yorkshire Universities to send assessments and supporting materials to the mobile devices of Health and Social Care students on work-based practice.
MyKnowledgeMap worked with T-Mobile and mobile software specialist ecommnet to create the mobile assessment and e-portfolio system for ALPS. The system supports the creation, distribution and storing of assessment tools on mobile devices. It allows tutors to create assessments based around core health and social care competencies and send them to the devices of students on work-based practice.
The ALPS mobile devices encourage reflective learning, as students are required to gather feedback from practice assessors, peers, service users and carers. When an assessment is uploaded to a student’s e-portfolio, the competency frameworks within the ALPS Assessment Suite allow the tutor to map the skills the student has demonstrated against interprofessional and profession-specific performance criteria.
The project has already been of benefit to hundreds of students, and there is huge scope to improve work-based learning and assessment for much greater numbers if ALPS processes and outputs are embedded when the programme comes to an end in September 2010.
For more information about the awards visit http://www.handheldlearning2009.com/awards.