EdNews - Spring 2008
A Publication of the College of Education at Florida State University
IS Students Take First Place at AECT Competition
For the third consecutive year, graduate students from the Program in Instructional Systems were honored at the 2007 Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) conference.
Melinda Soto and ChanMin Kim were awarded first place in the PacifiCorp Design & Development Award Competition. The goals of the competition are to:
- improve the professional practice of design and development in adult learning and performance-improvement settings;
- promote collaboration among students, faculty, and practitioners;
- mentor promising students by leaders outside their home institutions; and,
- recognize innovative design-and-development approaches to adult learning and performance-improvement problems.
Soto and Kim were mentored by Shauna Bona, president of McKinnon Mulherin in Salt Lake City, Utah.
The competition is open to student members of the Design and Development Division of AECT. The award committee formulates a problem statement each year with a challenging conceptual or practical problem relevant to the interests of the adult learning and performance-improvement community. Participating graduate students form teams of two and prepare a preliminary design abstract offering a proposed solution in response to the problem statement.
The three-member judging panel selects up to six abstracts considered most promising, based on creativity, theoretical soundness and practicality. Mentors from either corporate or academic backgrounds are assigned to the teams, working closely with the two graduate students on the final paper.
Finally, a judging panel selects up to three final papers based on creativity, theoretical soundness and practicality. The students present the papers at a special session during the annual AECT convention. Judges then select the best presentation for special recognition at an awards luncheon. Presentations are judged on clarity, teamwork and professionalism.
All graduate student finalists invited to present at AECT receive free conference registration.
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