COIL presents the Plus One Oscars
What are the Plus One Pledge Oscars?
The Community of Inclusive Learning (COIL) is celebrating another year together as a community by rewarding members for inclusive teaching practices.
We call it the "Plus One Pledge Oscars" because we're showcasing the changes we can make when we make just one change toward universal design. We're also hoping that we are too insignificant for the Academy to bother sending us angry cease and desist letters.
Come along to meet and mingle with other COIL members, learn about the teaching practices they tried this year, and celebrate everyone's wins. If you enact a plus one pledge, you might even win an award yourself!
We will have food, decorations and time to mingle both before and after the award announcements. We will also have a sensory/social recovery space if you need a break.
If you don’t teach...
You can still take a pledge and win a prize! Everyone can pledge to make their practices more inclusive, and a lot of folks who don't technically teach still have a big impact on the educational experience of our students. We will have an award category specifically for professional practice, and a couple of wildcard categories, so please do feel welcome and encouraged to join in.
How to participate
It's simple:
- If you have not already done so, pledge to make one change in your practice to make it more inclusive. Add your pledge to the Plus One Pledge Padlet.
- Enact your pledge for a while. We will be running drop-in sessions for support.
- Nominate yourself or a colleague for an Oscar by filling out a one-slide nomination and uploading it to the Oscar nomination Padlet.
That's it! Except for turning up to the event and enjoying the nibbles.
If PowerPoint, Padlet or both are inaccessible for you, options include:
- Alternative form for pledges (Microsoft Forms)
- Alternative form for nominations (Microsoft Forms)
- Contact us – we can take your entry by email or phone.
Timeline
- 22-28 April
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Plus One Pledge setting sessions.
- Monday 20 July
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Participants can begin nominating themselves or others on Padlet.
- Tuesday 21 July
- Drop-in sessions start
- Wednesday 19 August
- Thursday 20 August
- Friday 2 October
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Aim to have your nominations in by COB 2 October in advance of voting.
- Monday 5 October
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Community voting open for finalists in each category.
- Thursday 15 October
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End of drop-in sessions
All voting finalised and all entries closed.
- Thursday 29 October
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Awards announced. Party time!
Voting
Whether or not you take a pledge yourself, hop on to vote for finalists when entries pop up. We will narrow down entries by public vote on the Plus One Oscars Padlet. Then the conveners of COIL will select the winners for each category.
Prizes
Winners in each category will take home a Readings gift card and a totally believable Oscars trophy.
Can we nominate anyone?
Nominees do need to be University staff members. They don't have to be COILers, though, so you can absolutely nominate a colleague who isn't in COIL. Of course, if they're doing this kind of work, they may like to become a COIL member!
Feel free to nominate pairs or groups! Unfortunately, our budget won't stretch to buy bigger prizes for bigger groups, but we do welcome group efforts.
Event details
- Date: 29 October 2026
- Time: 2:00pm to 4:00pm
- Location: Parkville campus, Elisabeth Murdoch Building room G06, or online
- Registration: Register on Eventbrite.
If Eventbrite isn't accessible for you, please feel free to contact us and we can sign you up over email or over the phone.
We will have food, decorations, a low-sensory space, and time to mingle both before and after the award announcements.
Agenda
- 2:00 to 2:15pm – mix and mingle time in the lobby.
- 2:15 to 3:30pm – awards ceremony, seated in G06.
- 3:30 to 4:00pm – mix and mingle time in the lobby space with afternoon tea.
Why the recording won’t be a great substitute
We're happy to record the awards ceremony. However, the point is very much for this to be a community-socialising event. So, while we welcome everyone to register for online tickets, and we can record part of it, it's not the kind of event where a recording will be a great substitute. We are hoping to:
- Create a space where you can feel belonging
- Celebrate and recognise each other’s actions
- Talk with each other (both virtually and in the room) about our practice changes and what we learned.
We hope we will learn inclusivity together by creating an inclusive event, and by having conversations with each other.
Map
The following map shows the location for in-person attendance, which is G06, Elisabeth Murdoch Building, Parkville. The best entry will be around the side of the building near the Castro's coffee kiosk.
The venue is fairly accessible, with minorly clunky experiences if you use a wheelchair, accessible toilets or all-gender toilets.
Wayfinding
Wayfinding at Elisabeth Murdoch is tricky for new folks, so we plan to have wayfinding assistance near the building on the day.
Proper wayfinding instructions and social story are coming soon.
Access for wheelchairs, crutches and prams
Elisabeth Murdoch Building has a level entryway – indeed, the most accessible entrance is around the side where our event is. The lobby around the side does not have any steps. It’s actually close to some disability parking spots, and not far from the Stop 1 tram stop, which is also level.
The room G06 is technically accessible if you use a wheelchair, but not idea. You can absolutely access the lecture theatre and have space for a seat, but your choices are to sit up the back, or down the front with a chair lift. There is a step for most folks to access the stage, but the chair lift does enable people to access the stage without using the steps. We agree that this theatre, like so many teaching spaces, could be better in that respect.
Toilets
The nearest accessible toilets and all-gender toilets are nearby but not in the lobby space, which we acknowledge is also not great.
The toilets in the G06 lobby are also depressingly binary. They do have hand towels, though, so no hand dryer screaming at you.
We will include directions in the wayfinding instructions to the nearest all-gender and accessible loos.
Assistance animals
Assistance animals are very welcome. We’ll have a water bowl out for assistance doggos, and the neighbouring courtyard is available as a convenient toileting space.
Adjustable lighting
Let us know about your sensory needs.
We can dim the lighting easily, and close curtains to reduce light. If our attendees have conflicting needs, we can aim for a balance, such as having lighting up at first to enable people who need more light to find their seats, and then reducing lighting for folks with sensory sensitivities or photophobia.
We will have room G04 as a space for sensory and social breaks.
Assistive tech for hearing
Room G06 has both a hearing aid loop and a hearing infrared system. We will check the mics before we start, use the mics consistently throughout, and aim to make sure our faces are visible when we speak. We will enable captions in the room.
If someone is using the infrared system, we can get a receiver for you – just give us a heads-up so we make sure everything is working smoothly for you.
If you require live remote captioning or an Auslan interpreter, please let us know as soon as possible.
Slides in advance
We are happy to share the ceremony slides in advance (without the prize-winners' names, of course). There won't be much of anything on them – just housekeeping, survey links and an acknowledgement of Country – but definitely let us know if you need them in an accessible format ahead of time.
Customisable social experience
We will have room G04 as a space for sensory and social breaks.
We will also use ‘the dot system’ for socialising, providing coloured dot stickers for people to indicate high, medium or low social batteries. (Basically, whether you want to chat with new people today, or not so much.)
Parenting space
We are seeking access to the nearby tearoom as a parenting space. It’s got a microwave and a zip tap, and some comfy seats as well as a table.
Other needs we haven’t thought of yet
Please feel free, but in no way obliged, to let us know what else we can do.
We know that a lot of folks don’t like to ask for any kind of adjustment or accommodation, and indeed that people are put off because of prior experiences of discrimination or of access needs being ignored.
Let us assure you that we want to know what your access needs are. Ashley will personally make sure they’re implemented to the best of our ability. The point of this community is for us to learn inclusion by practising inclusion, so bring on the curly challenges! The uni might get mad if we knock down the building to start again, but within our limits, we want to help.