Deakin Learning Futures

Many studies suggest that young people, including commencing undergraduates are increasingly ‘Net-savvy’ and sophisticated users of information and communication technologies devices and techniques, including their ability to find information. This paper reports on the self-efficacy and ability of two diverse cohorts of students (one in 1999-2000 and the other in 2004-5) in finding websites and journals for academic purposes, using the same methods. The preliminary results suggest that more recent cohorts (that is, those closer to what has been more recently described as the ‘Net Generation’) have greater confidence in their ability to find websites and journals for academic study, and that their confidence is justified. However, deeper investigation suggests that these ‘Net Gen’ undergraduates are more confident than they should be, and that academic and information literacy programmes for commencing students are still necessary to ensure that our more ‘Net-savvy’ students are also ‘search-savvy’. Because of the differences in the cohorts tested in this research, the findings are limited; nevertheless, this small study does highlight discrepancies in students’ self-efficacy and indicators of ability. Having more robust tools to assess students’ abilities to find information, particularly for use with commencing undergraduates,  would be a useful addition to university curricula.

This paper examines pedagogical benefits of an electronic student portfolio to critically reflect on formal learning and life experiences that enhance employability skills. Goals of the approach are to 1) provide a framework for reflection on the attainment of graduate attributes, professional competencies, and course learning outcomes; 2) capture artefacts and reflections when and where learning occurs; 3) promote global citizenship and interdisciplinary collaboration; and 4) foster on-going professional development and professional networking with industry relevance and focus. The approach places emphasis on learning that takes place both within and outside of traditional classroom settings. This includes learning arising from course requirements, including work-integrated learning, practicums, and fieldwork. It also includes critical reflection on the development of employability skills gained in extracurricular activities, volunteer work, community service and other life experiences.

An institutional electronic portfolio called the iPortfolio had over 17,000 subscribers one year after its introduction at an Australian university. This paper reports on a study to determine how students use these iPortfolio accounts, and factors leading to uptake and effective use. Self-assessed competence with technology skills, factors motivating uptake, and barriers to adoption were examined using an online survey completed by 554 students. Of these, 339 had an iPortfolio at the time they completed the survey. Survey results were examined in the context of usage patterns based on data automatically collected for operational and administrative purposes. No statistically significant difference in prior technology use or self-assessed competence with information technology was observed when comparing students with iPortfolio accounts to those without. Assessment was found to be the principal driver of iPortfolio uptake. However, about two-fifths (42.9%) of students agreed that they were likely to use the iPortfolio in the future, even if it was not a course requirement. An additional 29.6% were neutral. Significant use of the iPortfolio to reflect on extracurricular activities was not observed. Improved employability outcomes were seen to be a benefit of iPortfolio adoption by about half (52%) of the students. Recommendations are made to promote iPortfolio uptake and encourage student reflection on ‘lifewide’ experiences that enhance employability and augment learning within the formal curriculum.

with Bethel, P., Fernandez, J. M., Harrison, J., & Breit, R. - Abstract: Benchmarking is commonly perceived as a key part of quality assurance and enhancement, and universities have had limited success to date in benchmarking, nationally or internationally, in matters concerning teaching and learning. This is partly due to the paucity of comparable quantitative indicators. The challenges are even greater when benchmarking is at course (program) level. As part of an Australian Learning and Teaching Council fellowship (Benchmarking partnerships for graduate employability), a process was designed to enable course leaders to engage in collaborative and confidential benchmarking at course level, with a particular focus on graduate employability (or, more specifically, the assurance of graduate capability development and achievement). Among the 24 benchmarking partners were three course leaders in undergraduate journalism. This paper describes their collective experiences and some of the outcomes of the benchmarking exercise. It also highlights some of the challenges of benchmarking in a discipline where graduates may follow a range of career paths, and where technology means professional practice is evolving at a very rapid pace. Given these underpinning uncertainties, discussions around employability and appropriate graduate capabilities are best had face to face with adequate time for establishing common understandings. This has also been a focused way of building capacity and scholarly networking.

Assuring standards of academic achievement is central to current policy initiatives within and beyond Australia. There is no one validated way of assuring standards, and institutions are likely to use a range (and probably combinations) of approaches. This paper proposes a proof of concept of an approach, already in the preliminary stages of implementation at Curtin University, based on predominantly formative approaches. In this proposal, course (program) teams draw on national guidelines and frameworks to create course-wide holistic rubrics to articulate and exemplify levels of capability achievement (during a course, at graduation and beyond). These are communicating to stakeholders, particularly students who can use portfolios to gather evidence of their achievements at or beyond the required standards. Subsequently, evidence from this approach may be harvested to inform more granular evidence of course effectiveness.

Keywords: standards, graduate attributes, capabilities, evidence-based, course quality

ePortfolios are playing an increasingly important role in both university and employment contexts. This paper provides background on iPortfolio, Curtin‘s bespoke ePortfolio system and a discussion of three case studies chosen to illustrate the diverse uses of iPortfolio across different disciplines. The implications for assessment and learning are also presented. ePortfolios have the potential to be a valuable learning and teaching tool in a variety of settings including use with large student cohorts, particularly in first year when they are introduced, facilitating subsequent learning and professional development within the university context. iPortfolio illustrates the use of a new technology to encourage course-wide learning and reflection with links to developing and substantiating graduate attributes, all of which contribute to student engagement.
The paper explores student perceptions of using iPortfolio within the student-learning environment. This includes linking to assessable tasks, opportunities for reflection on work- integrated learning and the student experience. Case studies drawn from geology and health sciences illustrate the diversity of iPortfolio usage within a student-focused learning environment. The case studies discuss the implications and considerations of iPortfolio implementation for formative assessment and feedback, summative assessment with large first year cohorts as well as opportunities for final year students to reflect upon and record their professional practice experience.
Curtin‘s iPortfolio provides a dynamic environment for students to assess their achievement of graduate attributes and engage in self and peer evaluation. In a world increasingly dependent on Web 2.0 technologies, graduates of the future need to be able to reflect on their learning and present themselves in digital as well as face-to-face contexts. Using iPortfolio can assist students in developing graduate attributes throughout a degree and building greater employability. As with any new learning environment, authentic assessment is evolving. The paper concludes with a discussion on the limitations, lessons learnt so far and the potential future use and rewards from adopting ePortfolios within university teaching environments.

Problem-based learning (PBL) continues to challenge educational institutions in terms of demonstrating its effectiveness. Prior studies have offered insight into the methods, application, and experiences of teaching using PBL. However, student behaviours and the learning cultures that develop in PBL settings are also important. In this paper, we present the ways students of a first year engineering course at an Australian university approach PBL. A number of PBL teams in the same subject were observed throughout two semesters with their consent. This paper reports on two of these teams. Some observations were video taped to aid analysis. The purpose of this study was to analyse and compare learning approaches that help or hinder successful group outcomes. It is evident from the data that individuals in the groups have a strong influence on what is learnt. Some students also focus more on exploiting the assessment system than on maximising their learning.

Problem based learning (PBL) is a group learning environment that involves a radical change in the way students learn and the role that academic staff play in facilitating learning. The PBL approach claims to build extended technological and social understandings as it offers a context for development of autonomous learners. It has an emphasis on collective and individual learning motivation and decision-making behaviours.
In this paper, we present the responses of students to the heterogeneous characteristic of PBL teams in a first year electrical engineering degree course at an Australian University. The learning cultures in PBL teams that emerge as a result of the diverse characteristics of teams are also presented in this paper.
A number of PBL teams were observed and interviewed throughout their first year course with their consent. Analysis of the data collected about students’ learning and outcomes in PBL teams informed the ways in which individual students approach their learning, the ways in which they control, regulate and direct their learning individually and as a group and the extent to which they participate, engage and thereby learn in the course.
It is evident that some students have a strong influence on the behaviour of other students in their team. These students also influenced what is learnt as a team, the ways in which they interrelated, worked as a team and problem solved in changing circumstances. Therefore, when designing student teams for PBL academics should not assume that a mono-cultural group or a mixed-ability group of students will work successfully together. We think that the results of this research inform both the design of PBL courses and the facilitation of PBL groups to accomplish successful group learning outcomes.

The study reported in this paper investigated the disciplinary and cross-disciplinary learning by students in problem-based learning (PBL). Fifty students in eight PBL teams in a first year undergraduate engineering course participated in this study. Data collection for the study involved ethnographic observations supplemented by individual and focus group interviews and analysis of student work samples. It was found that most of the first year electrical engineering students acquired disciplinary knowledge relevant to the particular tasks that they worked on for the team. However, it appeared that they either did not appreciate the connection of their task to the main problem or did not value linking their task with the tasks of other members in their team. We think the findings of this paper should inform the design of PBL courses, in particular the design of problems and assessment. If we want students to cross disciplinary boundaries, we need to incorporate strategies that require them to integrate knowledge across disciplinary boundaries while solving problems.

Large scale curriculum renewal projects in universities present particular challenges for academic course leaders, teaching staff and central academic developers. While acknowledging the difficulties that mandated projects bring to the nature of relationships between all participants in a large scale project, there is also opportunity to support teaching academics to come together collaboratively and reflect on their curriculum. One essential ingredient in completing the large scale project at our university is for Course Leaders to bring individual teaching academics together as a coordinated team in the curriculum renewal process. As central unit academic developers we sought to create professional development resources and strategies that would focus on collaborative learning teams. Our strategy was determined by a number of factors; the ability to provide support for all courses, the desire to assist the formation of academic teaching teams, and the intention to create flexible resources suitable for adaptation to different course contexts. This paper reflects on this professional learning approach and how an online learning resource was presented as a collaborative opportunity rather than an individual space for professional learning. Our reflection is framed by three key questions. What promoted collaboration within the course teams? What hindered collaboration? How could we enhance our framework for our work in the future? We conclude that a subtle, nuanced approach is needed for professional learning to occur in academic teaching development. When provision of Academic Professional Development is linked to large scale curriculum renewal projects, it is essential to create learning opportunities for academics to be collegial in their teaching teams.

Despite decades of dependence on sessional teaching staff, universities in Australia and internationally still find it difficult to support the teaching work of this large, casual workforce. A significant consequence of casually-employed teaching staff is risk; sessional academics’ professional identity is compromised, quality assurance of students’ learning experiences is uncertain, and this in turn, jeopardises universities’ teaching and learning programs. These risks have existed in universities for decades, yet policies and practices that support the work of sessional staff remain inconsistent or absent. The implementation model for supporting sessional staff described in this paper, the Four Phase Model, (the 4P Model) is informed by the Sessional Staff Standards Framework (BLASST 2013), and, the Collective Impact Model, known as the CI Model (Kania & Kraner 2011). The 4P Model could help faculties systematise actions towards standards-based support for sessional staff that are inclusive professionally and contribute to the development of quality teaching and learning practice. The authors explain the thinking behind the new 4P Model, and, discuss its usefulness as a vehicle for managing incremental progress within this ‘difficult to change’ context. An evaluation of a completed trial of Phase One of the 4P Model has been included to assist faculty with implementation of all four phases of this model.

In the field of technology-enhanced learning design, the rise of Web 2.0 has been the filip needed to accelerate the emergence of socially-connected global learners. These highly social learners now use the web to engage with knowledge and skill development and as such, online education has moved irrevocably beyond simply the finding and sharing of information among learners.

In Australia, a significant number of students enrol in first-year university biology without the benefit of high school biology. In order to help students support each other, the authors of this paper (a central unit academic developer and a biology coordinator of first-year biology) created a classroom activity that facilitated the distribution of the more experienced students of biology throughout the practical work groups. An important feature of this creative design for forming groups, called the GLO Activity in this paper, was the embedding of two of the University’s key teaching and learning priorities within the activity. These were the University’s eight graduate learning outcomes (GLOs) and, inclusive education practice. We discuss creative pedagogies in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) and their link to supporting students in their first year of university study. We explain our scholarly thinking behind the GLO Activity and evaluate its impact. Finally, w...

This study evaluated how the pairing of sessional teaching staff in a large first-year undergraduate science subject provided context-specific professional development for sessional teaching staff. We used a likert-scale questionnaire to ask sessional staff to rate how effectively peer-pairing in the classroom contributed to a range of teaching skills and capacities. Irrespective of the level of teaching experience, all sessional teaching staff rated the pairings as very beneficial to extremely beneficial for support with subject content. Lesser-experienced peers also found the pairings to be very beneficial to extremely beneficial for developing classroom management and student interaction techniques. This evaluation of peer-pairing in a large first-year science subject demonstrates the strategy can be an effective means of providing teaching development opportunities for sessional teaching staff, and facilitates particular teacher-student interactions to engage students in discipl...

The authors of this paper are academic developers in an Australian university. In thispaper, we discuss the outcomes of a small pilot study about value tensions; completed toinform a larger research project about the possibilities of making collaborative collegiality an explicit aim of a curriculum review. After interviewing four course leaders, we wereinterested in the highly specific nature of the course leaders’ challenges. Could a criticalenquiry schema based on each course leader’s emerging value tensions provide a scaffold for scholarly, critical discourse? Making tensions explicit in teaching and learning development work in university course teams may begin a process of situated, critical questioning and discourse on the curriculum itself. We acknowledge this work can, attimes, elicit a form of difficult discourse.

The purpose of this study was to identify effective teaching practices that will assist international students to achieve better learning outcomes while studying first year architecture at an Australian university. This study identified and described learning problems and sought to find solutions. In particular, it focussed on access to the language of instruction and learning practices presented in three subjects that all students undertake in a first year course of study in architecture. This naturalist, qualitative case study was informed by studies relating to international students, cultural diversity and internationalism in higher education settings and the literature relating to issues of inclusive curriculum and principles in learning for higher education settings. Research data was collected through interviews, observation of students and faculty staff in lectures and tutorials, the lecturers’ Quality of Teaching surveys, and the researcher’s survey of students. The analysi...