Marking rubrics, providing text-based descriptors of criteria at different levels, are commonplac... more Marking rubrics, providing text-based descriptors of criteria at different levels, are commonplace in the higher education sector. Assignment exemplars have also been used to help students interpret marking rubrics. Here we report on research following a project carried out in a large first year undergraduate unit of study. The aim of this project was to assist students in understanding what was required in a critical reflection report assignment. Part of the approach involved an online exercise where students used a marking rubric (later used to assess their own reports) to grade and comment on a student report from a previous cohort. In tutorials, students were then provided with an 'expert' marker's annotations of the same assignment and engaged in a number of related learning activities. A sample of students' grades for and comments on the exemplar before the tutorial activities revealed a number of differences between the expert marker's assessment and the students' assessments. Following the tutorial activities, there was closer alignment between the students' and expert marker's grades and comments on several criteria. Before the tutorial activities, for example, students equated the use of theory with surface features of the exemplar report such as referencing. After the tutorial activities, students were more aware of inaccuracies in the treatment of theory in the exemplar report. Our findings underscore writing (and written assessment) as a social practice (Lillis & Scott, 2007) tied closely with building disciplinary knowledge. Designing learning activities to support assessment, therefore, has the added potential to not only clarify the assessment task but to deepen disciplinary learning. We invite the audience to work with an assessment task and design a supportive learning activity.
The claim made in this paper is that higher education reform and learning advising practice are n... more The claim made in this paper is that higher education reform and learning advising practice are not simply part of a natural progression; rather, they are discursively constituted. To illustrate this argument we draw on the work of Michel Foucault to reflect on two iterations of learning advising practice in Learning Development at the University of Wollongong, Australia over the last decade. Our discussion will demonstrate how a multiplicity of discourses underpin educational reform and privilege particular learning advising practices in the Australian higher education context.
The main focus of this paper is the creation of partnerships between learning development academi... more The main focus of this paper is the creation of partnerships between learning development academics and curricula, faculty staff and the institution that seek to ensure students achieve at their potential. These partnerships are part of a paradigm shift in learning support that has replaced a remedial philosophy with a developmental philosophy. The paper also focuses on the value of these partnerships to curricula, discipline academics, faculties and the institution as well as to students. It highlights three issues: • the creation of partnerships to ensure student learning; • the benefits of these partnerships to learning across an institution; • the benefits of these partnerships to teaching across an institution. Evaluation of the model and its partnerships has shown that: • staff acquire a level of explanatory power about tertiary writing that allows them to rethink curriculum development and teach and assess skills as well as content; • rich, inclusive curricula are produced th...
The implementation of graduate attributes is a contentious addition to the agenda of Australian u... more The implementation of graduate attributes is a contentious addition to the agenda of Australian universities as they face issues related to quality assurance and funding. In this case study, we describe a way that we as teachers can work ‘through’ rather than uncritically with the graduate attributes. We suggest that the graduate attributes potentially allow the university community to focus on the processes of pedagogy. The paper also demonstrates how the graduate attributes can be used to initiate the development of a community of practice through collaboration and sharing of teaching strategies. The project allows a bottom-up approach for interpretation of a top-down policy initiative.
In recent years, Australian doctoral education has diversified and expanded, with concomitant shi... more In recent years, Australian doctoral education has diversified and expanded, with concomitant shifts in the format and purpose of the PhD. While there is now a considerable body of research into what constitutes good quality, effective supervision of PhD projects within this environment, there is surprisingly little about the training or professional development supervisors receive in order to succeed in this demanding task. Even less is reported on how supervisors learn to develop their students’ writing. This paper reports on an Australia-wide study that sought to find out how institutions support their research supervisors through centrally provisioned professional development, with a particular focus on elements of those programs related to doctoral student writing. We mapped the current supervisor development offerings in Australian universities through a study of publicly available websites and interviews with key personnel involved in organising those programs. Our research r...
Join My Mailing List. Alisa Percy. University of Wollongong. Academic Language and Learning Lectu... more Join My Mailing List. Alisa Percy. University of Wollongong. Academic Language and Learning Lecturer, Learning Development; Contact Information. Honors & Awards. ... Search the Selected Works of Alisa Percy. Search All Sites. RSS Feed. Print this page. Bookmark. ...
Marking rubrics, providing text-based descriptors of criteria at different levels, are commonplac... more Marking rubrics, providing text-based descriptors of criteria at different levels, are commonplace in the higher education sector. Assignment exemplars have also been used to help students interpret marking rubrics. Here we report on research following a project carried out in a large first year undergraduate unit of study. The aim of this project was to assist students in understanding what was required in a critical reflection report assignment. Part of the approach involved an online exercise where students used a marking rubric (later used to assess their own reports) to grade and comment on a student report from a previous cohort. In tutorials, students were then provided with an 'expert' marker's annotations of the same assignment and engaged in a number of related learning activities. A sample of students' grades for and comments on the exemplar before the tutorial activities revealed a number of differences between the expert marker's assessment and the students' assessments. Following the tutorial activities, there was closer alignment between the students' and expert marker's grades and comments on several criteria. Before the tutorial activities, for example, students equated the use of theory with surface features of the exemplar report such as referencing. After the tutorial activities, students were more aware of inaccuracies in the treatment of theory in the exemplar report. Our findings underscore writing (and written assessment) as a social practice (Lillis & Scott, 2007) tied closely with building disciplinary knowledge. Designing learning activities to support assessment, therefore, has the added potential to not only clarify the assessment task but to deepen disciplinary learning. We invite the audience to work with an assessment task and design a supportive learning activity.
The claim made in this paper is that higher education reform and learning advising practice are n... more The claim made in this paper is that higher education reform and learning advising practice are not simply part of a natural progression; rather, they are discursively constituted. To illustrate this argument we draw on the work of Michel Foucault to reflect on two iterations of learning advising practice in Learning Development at the University of Wollongong, Australia over the last decade. Our discussion will demonstrate how a multiplicity of discourses underpin educational reform and privilege particular learning advising practices in the Australian higher education context.
The main focus of this paper is the creation of partnerships between learning development academi... more The main focus of this paper is the creation of partnerships between learning development academics and curricula, faculty staff and the institution that seek to ensure students achieve at their potential. These partnerships are part of a paradigm shift in learning support that has replaced a remedial philosophy with a developmental philosophy. The paper also focuses on the value of these partnerships to curricula, discipline academics, faculties and the institution as well as to students. It highlights three issues: • the creation of partnerships to ensure student learning; • the benefits of these partnerships to learning across an institution; • the benefits of these partnerships to teaching across an institution. Evaluation of the model and its partnerships has shown that: • staff acquire a level of explanatory power about tertiary writing that allows them to rethink curriculum development and teach and assess skills as well as content; • rich, inclusive curricula are produced th...
The implementation of graduate attributes is a contentious addition to the agenda of Australian u... more The implementation of graduate attributes is a contentious addition to the agenda of Australian universities as they face issues related to quality assurance and funding. In this case study, we describe a way that we as teachers can work ‘through’ rather than uncritically with the graduate attributes. We suggest that the graduate attributes potentially allow the university community to focus on the processes of pedagogy. The paper also demonstrates how the graduate attributes can be used to initiate the development of a community of practice through collaboration and sharing of teaching strategies. The project allows a bottom-up approach for interpretation of a top-down policy initiative.
In recent years, Australian doctoral education has diversified and expanded, with concomitant shi... more In recent years, Australian doctoral education has diversified and expanded, with concomitant shifts in the format and purpose of the PhD. While there is now a considerable body of research into what constitutes good quality, effective supervision of PhD projects within this environment, there is surprisingly little about the training or professional development supervisors receive in order to succeed in this demanding task. Even less is reported on how supervisors learn to develop their students’ writing. This paper reports on an Australia-wide study that sought to find out how institutions support their research supervisors through centrally provisioned professional development, with a particular focus on elements of those programs related to doctoral student writing. We mapped the current supervisor development offerings in Australian universities through a study of publicly available websites and interviews with key personnel involved in organising those programs. Our research r...
Join My Mailing List. Alisa Percy. University of Wollongong. Academic Language and Learning Lectu... more Join My Mailing List. Alisa Percy. University of Wollongong. Academic Language and Learning Lecturer, Learning Development; Contact Information. Honors & Awards. ... Search the Selected Works of Alisa Percy. Search All Sites. RSS Feed. Print this page. Bookmark. ...
In this presentation we take a look at the ‘skill’ of summarising, cited by Howard and Davies (20... more In this presentation we take a look at the ‘skill’ of summarising, cited by Howard and Davies (2009) as one core skill in the “trinity of techniques” (along with quoting and paraphrasing) that a writer must master in order to avoid the accusation of plagiarism. A recent Google search using the search phrase “how to summarise without plagiarising” revealed 79,400 websites that will show writers how to summarise. Many of these sites make the point that a summary is a shortened version of the original text that highlights the main or key ideas of the original text, with the proviso that the key ideas must be written “in you own words”. The question, however, is – how should a writer shorten the original text? We address this question in the context of students responding to assessment tasks that require them to summarise another text. We take as our starting point Sue Hood’s (2008, p.352) argument that summarising an original text involves transforming it. Following this, we suggest that textual transformation involves the summary writer in a complex set of decision-making processes, understanding and textual engineering that exceed the conception of summary writing as a simple skill. In our presentation, we focus on four aspects of Hood’s transformation, recontextualised somewhat for our purposes here: 1. Recognition that writer’s purpose in summarising may not be the same as the original author's and that this will influence the transformation. 2. Decision making about what information in the original text is salient to transform into a summary within the new context. 3. The cognitive and linguistic expertise involved in recognising the author's attitude in the original text, the decision making process of deciding whether this will be represented in the summary, and the linguistic expertise required to do so. 4. The linguistic expertise required to distinguish the summary of the original text from the original text itself. We contextualize these aspects of transformation within a learning and teaching resource that we have developed to teach students how to summarise.
References
Hood, S. (2008). Summary writing in academic contexts: Implicating meaning in processes of change. Linguistics and Education, 19(4), 351-365.
Howard, R. M., & Davies, L. J. (2009). Plagiarism in the Internet age. Educational Leadership, 66(6), 64-67.
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Papers by Bronwyn James
The question, however, is – how should a writer shorten the original text? We address this question in the context of students responding to assessment tasks that require them to summarise another text. We take as our starting point Sue Hood’s (2008, p.352) argument that summarising an original text involves transforming it. Following this, we suggest that textual transformation involves the summary writer in a complex set of decision-making processes, understanding and textual engineering that exceed the conception of summary writing as a simple skill. In our presentation, we focus on four aspects of Hood’s transformation, recontextualised somewhat for our purposes here:
1. Recognition that writer’s purpose in summarising may not be the same as the original author's and that this will influence the transformation.
2. Decision making about what information in the original text is salient to transform into a summary within the new context.
3. The cognitive and linguistic expertise involved in recognising the author's attitude in the original text, the decision making process of deciding whether this will be represented in the summary, and the linguistic expertise required to do so.
4. The linguistic expertise required to distinguish the summary of the original text from the original text itself.
We contextualize these aspects of transformation within a learning and teaching resource that we have developed to teach students how to summarise.
References
Hood, S. (2008). Summary writing in academic contexts: Implicating meaning in processes of change. Linguistics and Education, 19(4), 351-365.
Howard, R. M., & Davies, L. J. (2009). Plagiarism in the Internet age. Educational Leadership, 66(6), 64-67.