10th September 2010
Salford staff member awarded for use of technology in learning
A University of Salford staff member has been named the Learning Technologist of the Year by the Association for Learning Technology (ALT) for her work with postgraduate research students and researchers across the University.
Cristina Costa works with PhD students championing innovative and critical use of social media such as blogs, wikis and Twitter for networking, collaboration and dissemination of their research.
She recently helped students in the Centre for Translation, Interpreting and Intercultural Studies in the School of Languages to organise the first student-led online conference on translation and interpreting studies which brought together researchers from across Europe to communicate their research via web-conferencing.
She also works with the University’s researchers to help them make use of new web technologies to assist collaborative research ventures and holds regular training sessions.
The judges praised her for: “Developing a set of resources, activities and events that help staff and students to learn to make effective use of social media for modelling the behaviour that she wishes to encourage, and for combining her own research with the overall role to considerable effect.”
Cristina said: “Many PhD students use social media on a daily basis and social network sites such as Facebook are common practice in their personal lives. However, there is a need to foster reflection and understanding regarding the advantages and implications that these communication channels can have on their professional and academic lives.
“Promoting digital literacy amongst the research community is vital in the current environment as it provides them with new and open forms of sharing their work and engaging with the wider community. I’m extremely happy that my work at the University has been recognised.”
The award was presented at the ALT conference in Nottingham on Wednesday, 8 September by Sugata Mitra, Professor of Educational Technology at the University of Newcastle.