University of Melbourne Excellence Awards

The Department’s Associate Professors Michael Pianta and Laura Downie have been recognised through the University’s Excellence Awards for their work developing CrowdCARE (Crowdsourcing Critical Appraisal of Research Evidence).

Group photo

Pictured: A/Prof Michael Pianta (left), and A/Prof Laura Downie (second from right) pictured with Dean MDHS Professor Shitij Kapur.

The CrowdCARE team was awarded the Norman Curry Award for Innovation and Excellence in Educational Programs for developing the online platform. CrowdCARE aims to teach users research critical appraisal skills and improve their enquiry-based learning and practice.

Created by a team of professionals who in addition to the academic team leads, include Mr Gordon Yau, Mr David Vasjuta and Mr Gavin Leys from Learning Environments, CrowdCARE is believed to be the first platform of its kind worldwide. It involves trained, crowdsourced users including students, academic experts and health practitioners contributing to an evolving appraised evidence database; this contrasts with other discipline-specific evidence databases that instead rely on paid experts to perform this task.

Currently, CrowdCARE has over 1,460 users across more than 20 countries and is quickly gaining a reputation worldwide as an easy to navigate and impactful teaching and learning resource. Free to make an account online, the platform has been designed for accessibility with a simple display and gamification through leader boards and badges. After completing an introductory training tutorial online, users are ready to begin their practical learning through active participation and peer interaction.

To make your free account and find about more please visit the CrowdCARE website.