Oxford’s annual OxTALENT awards (“Celebrating the digital at the University of Oxford”) recognise members of the University who have made innovative use of digital technology in order to foster learning and academic practice at either undergraduate or postgraduate level, develop more effective links between teaching and research, and improve impact through outreach and public engagement.
This year OII staff and students won awards in three categories:
Otto Kässi and Vili Lehdonvirta won the Data Visualisation prize for their Online Labour Index (OLI), a new economic indicator that provides an online labour market equivalent of conventional labour market statistics. It measures the utilisation of online labour platforms over time and across countries and occupations, and provides a solid evidence base for future policy and research. The judges felt that “the Online Labour Index perfectly demonstrates the power of interactive visualisations”.
The judges were impressed by the use of the fledgling Interactive Data Network service to build the interactive dashboard using R and Shiny, and by the commitment to making both the data behind the visualisation and the code for the dashboard itself open access. They particularly appreciated the cleanliness of the dashboard design and the slightly unsubtle prompts to the viewer of the interactivity available to them. They also noted that “it was also clear from the submission that the visualisation has helped significantly in getting this topic discussed within government bodies.”
Kathryn Eccles and Jamie Cameron were on the team that won the “IT Innovation Challenge” prize for the Cabinet project, a platform on which digital versions of museum objects can be made available alongside course materials, texts and images, and on which students and teachers can interact with the material either individually or as a group. It has been used to support and enhance Oxford’s teaching in History, History of Art, English Literature, Anthropology, Archaeology and Business.
Paige Mustain was on the team led by the Department of Education in collaboration with Oxfordshire County Council, which won the “Outreach and Widening Participation” prize. Their go_girl: code+create project engaged a group of young women from non-traditional educational backgrounds to undergo a programme to build their confidence and self-esteem through developing videos, games, and web apps.
Congratulations, all!
