The British Journal of Educational Technology (BJET) judges this biennial award for the best presentation on an educational-technology-related topic to be delivered during the BERA Conference. The prize includes an invitation to publish in the journal and other support to maximise the dissemination and impact of the presenter’s research.

2021 winners

This year’s winner is Jade Rushby (University of York), for her paper Pre-service Teachers’ Reactions to a Simulated Teaching Intervention.

Her presentation reported the findings from two studies conducted in the UK and Australia that investigated 1,102 pre-service teachers’ reactions to an online scenario-based learning (SBL) intervention completed prior to their teaching placements. The intervention provided these pre-service teachers an opportunity to reflect on their approaches to a range of text and video classroom scenarios and receive immediate feedback from experienced teachers. The results suggested that the SBL intervention may help pre-service teachers to feel more confident and prepared for their teaching placements. The intervention was positively received by participants, who valued the opportunity to engage with realistic classroom scenarios in a low-risk environment.

The BJET editorial board and editors, who judged the award, said:

‘The presentation was very interesting and well-structured, and despite relying mostly on teachers’ perception of the intervention we valued the its overall research focus of the and the qualitative analysis that underpinned its findings. It would be interesting if future work were to look into downstream outcomes of the intervention in terms of teacher competences and, importantly, its impact on pupils.’

The judges also commended Carlos Sanchez-Lozano (Cenfotec), for his paper Understanding Complexity in Online Course Design: Combining Data Analytics, Soft Systems Methodology, and Agent-Based Modelling.

This presentation conceived online learning experiences as networked spaces with boundaries that include different types of resources. It attempted to understand the dynamics of these networked spaces, their emergent properties and their interactions in order to inform their design. An online professional course was analysed as a case study, using a particular form of action research, soft systems methodology and data mining to uncover interaction patterns within the digital space.

The judges said:

‘We valued the high-quality of this presentation from an independent researcher, which included a rich literature review. Despite discussing what appeared to be preliminary work, there was clearly potential to gain interesting insights from this transferable process.’

2019 winners

The BJET editors are pleased to announce the winners of the BJET Best EdTech Paper 2019 at the BERA Conference as Kongkiat Kespechara, Somying Saithanu, Chonlada Sittitoon, Apansarin Kanarat, Pinanong Hakard and Dollaya Hirunyasiri from the Sodsri-Sridwongsa Foundation, Thailand, for their paper ,’Using learning analytics to visualize how different teaching plans affect learning outcomes, focusing specifically on skills, in a rural primary school in Thailand’.

We would also like to commend Rachel Williams and Rebecca Jesson as close runners-up for their presentation on ‘Examining the impact of a digital literacy programme on student achievement in New Zealand: The results of a two-year national study’.

In recognition of the high quality of ECR presentations, a BJET Best ECR EdTech Paper 2019 Award was given to Lesley Sharpe of Loughborough University for her presentation, ‘Utilising technology to facilitate inclusive participatory research with young people with impairments’.