Digital Commons Network^™

Implementing Vertical And Horizontal Engineering Students' Integration And Assessment Of Consequence Academic Achievement, Sarim Al-Zubaidy, Nidhal Abdulaziz, Reza Dashtpour

Faculty of Informatics - Papers (Archive)

Recent scholarship references indicate that integration of the student body can result in an enhanced learning experience for students and also greater satisfaction. This paper reports the results of a case study whereby mechanical engineering students studying at a newly established branch campus in Dubai of a British university were exposed to vertical and horizontal integration. Different activities have been embedded to ensure that students integrated and worked together with their peers and colleagues at different levels. The implemented processes and practices led to improved academic achievements, which were better than those of a similar cohort of students where no …

Attributions Of The Educational Outcomes Of Students With Learning Disabilities In China, Stuart Woodcock, Han Jiang

Faculty of Education - Papers (Archive)

This paper aims to raise awareness of the importance of attributional beliefs in relation to the educational outcomes of students with a learning disability (LD) in China. The study presented in this paper examined the attributional beliefs that Chinese pre-service teachers had developed towards students with LD, in comparison to students without LD. The findings show that Chinese pre-service teachers did not differ in their attributional beliefs between students with and without LD. Implications from the findings, and future research recommendations are also presented.

Heightened Potentials: Assisting Students To Work Independently And Collaboratively In The Creative And Performing Arts Disciplines, Lotte Latukefu, Marcus O'Donnell, Grant N. Ellmers

Faculty of Creative Arts - Papers (Archive)

Australian universities are currently engaged in a number of important intersecting curriculum review and quality assurance process. These include development of university-based Graduate Qualities and development of national, discipline-based Standards. It is increasingly apparent that identifying, clarifying, measuring and promoting these markers of quality will play a vital role in the evolution of rigorous curriculum standards in the next few years. The aims of the current research project are to identify how learning and assessment are organised in music, theatre, graphic design and journalism programs in a Faculty of Creative Arts to assist students to work independently and collaboratively in …

Patterns Of Paid Work Among Higher Education Students: Implications For The Bradley Reforms, Joanne Dearlove, James Grice Thomas Marland

Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education) - Papers

No abstract provided.

Book Review - Developing College Skills In Students With Autism And Asperger's Syndrome, Kimberley Mcmahon-Coleman

Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education) - Papers

The support and success of students with disabilities is a key aspect of the social inclusion agenda. This cohort has been identified by the Bradley Report as one of the under-represented student groups requiring attention. In recent years, Australian universities have reflected a marked increase in students with registered disabilities. Many of these are "invisible" disabilities such as learning disorders, mental health disorders, or students with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Final Report From The Key Stage 3 Phase: Influences On Students' Development From Age 11-14, Kathy Sylva, Edward Melhuish, Pam Sammons, Iram Siraj-Blatchford, Brenda Taggart

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Since 1997 the Effective Pre-school, Primary and Secondary Education project (EPPE/EPPSE) has investigated the attainment and development of approximately 3,000 children from pre-school to the end of Key Stage 3 (KS3). This current phase of the research explored how different phases of education, especially secondary school, are related to students' attainment, social behaviour and dispositions at age 14 (Year 9 in secondary school) and the factors that predict developmental change. However, schools are not the only influence on students' development; families and communities matter too and these 'social' influences are carefully studied in EPPSE 3-14. The net effects of neighbourhood, …

Influences On Students' Attainment And Progress In Key Stage 3: Academic Outcomes In English, Maths And Science In Year 9, Pam Sammons, Kathy Sylva, Edward Melhuish, Iram Siraj-Blatchford, Brenda Taggart, Katalin Toth, Diana Draghici, Rebecca Smees

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

The Effective Pre-school, Primary and Secondary Education Project (EPPSE) has investigated the academic and social-behavioural development of approximately 3,000 children from the age of 3+ years since 1997. This Research Brief focuses on the relationships between a range of individual student, family, home, pre-, primary and secondary school characteristics and students' academic attainment in English, maths and science in Year 9 at secondary school (age 14). It compares the latest findings with those found for students' attainment at younger ages. It also highlights the influences of secondary school on students' attainment in the core curriculum areas and studies their academic …

Assessing Competence During Professional Experience Placements For Undergraduate Nursing Students: A Systematic Review, Sharon Bourgeois, Denise Blanchard, Katherine Nelson

Faculty of Science, Medicine and Health - Papers: part A

Review Objectives To identify and synthesise the best available evidence about the meaningfulness of assessments of competence during the professional experience placement for undergraduate nursing students, with the overarching aim to make recommendations concerning strategies and initiatives that support assessment of competence for undergraduate nursing programs.

Review Questions What are undergraduate nurses‟ experiences of the clinical assessment of competence? What are registered nurses‟/health care professionals experiences of the clinical assessment of competence?

Comparison Of Assessment Performance Of Rural And Regional Students In A Unique Australian Graduate-Entry Medical Program, David L. Garne, J Bushnell, A Lethbridge, J Douglas

Faculty of Science, Medicine and Health - Papers: part A

The Graduate School of Medicine at the University of Wollongong is one of Australia's newest medical schools, with a regional/rural focus and a distributed campus, and students are all expected to spend a significant proportion of their training in a rural setting. Due to the diverse learning environments that students are exposed to, we sought to determine by phase if there was any difference in examination results between groups who were located in rural settings and those in regional settings.

Building A Matrix In The Students' Mind Through Embedding Cross-Disciplinarity In Innovative Capstone Courses, Michael Zanko, Jan Turbill, Christopher Sykes, Belinda Gibbons, Lee Moerman, Trevor Spedding

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

Universities are increasingly looking to round off undergraduate business degrees with a capstone course that provides students with learning experiences that synthesise prior knowledge, skills and abilities acquired throughout their degree and that leads them to look forward to the transition to the world of employment and professional careers. Capstone courses are also widely employed by universities as an efficient and effective basis for the justified assurance of overall degree learning goals/outcomes often for external professional, international or governmental accreditation purposes. In this paper, we take a closer look at these increasingly important capstone courses as part of a multi-university …

Novel Digital Food Photos Resource Enhances Knowledge Of Nutrition And Dietetics Students, Karen Walton, Anne Mcmahon, Chris Brewer, Joanna Baker, Janaye Fish, Fiona Manning, Sara Grafenauer, Meredith Kennedy, Yasmine Probst

Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences - Papers (Archive)

A robust knowledge of food composition, the Australian food supply and cooking methods is integral to dietetics practice. Students learn these concepts across a variety of subjects, however a new dietetics subject in 2009 and a faculty based learning and teaching grant provided a timely opportunity to develop innovative new digital resources for students to enhance their food composition knowledge. One-hundred and sixty high quality digital food photographs were developed and nutrient composition data were added, before making the resource accessible to students via their eLearning sites. The primary aim of this study was to assess the views and experiences …

The Elephant In The Chat Room: Will International Students Stay At Home?, Thomas Birtchnell

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

FUTURE OF HIGHER EDUCATION: We continue our series on the rise of online and blended learning and how free online courses are set to transform the higher education sector. Today, Wollongong University’s Thomas Birtchnell looks at what online education will mean for the international student market.

University Students' Subject Matter Knowledge And Misconception Of Teaching Games For Understanding And Its Implication To Teaching Practice, Julismah Jani, Phil Pearson, Greg Forrest, Paul Webb

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

This study is to track the subject matter knowledge of and misconception about Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU) of fourth year undergraduate pre-service teachers' physical education majors at an Australian university. The test of reliability on misconception scale are subjected to a Rasch analysis (KR-20 = .52) which consists of 20 dichotomous questions with true/false answers. Analyses of the data reveal that students achieve a credit on subject matter knowledge and attain four misconceptions about TGfU. There is a significant (p < 0.05) difference in the scores for subject matter knowledge and concepts of TGfU through paired samples t test. These results imply that subject matter knowledge does have an effect on students' concepts of TGfU but with very low relationship (r(53 = .19, p < 0.05). The implication of content knowledge to teaching is to resist the pre-concept or misconception of the subject matter. If pre-service teachers are to improve the quality of teaching and learning in content areas, he or she needs to possess a deep understanding of games both within and across categories in TGfU. Misconceptions tend to be very resistant to instruction because learning entails replacing or radically reorganizing student knowledge. This puts teachers in the very challenging position of needing to bring about significant conceptual change in student knowledge. Therefore pre-service teachers must know the subject matter they teach and their performance will be determined by the depth of their content knowledge in relation to teaching, making this an essential component to their teaching practice. Teachers must know the subject they teach and this is important to teacher competency.

Technology Use Takes A Boost Among University Students, Zeenath Reza Khan

University of Wollongong in Dubai - Papers

The speed with which the information technology has evolved is unparallel to any other technological evolution man has ever witnessed. From hospitals to classrooms, technology seems to have taken over people's lives. Where there have been studies to see the impact of technology in varying aspects of life, there seem to be little or no studies on the actual rate of increase in usage of e-technologies among university students and why they have become so popular. This paper uses a survey tool that captures responses from 900 students to study the rate of increase in student use of various e-technologies …

Teaching Monte Carlo Codes At University: Development Of A Geant4 Course For Students Of Schools Of Physics, Susanna Guatelli, Dean Cutajar, Anatoly B. Rosenfeld, Catherine Layton

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Nowadays, it is important that students of Schools of Physics include the study of Monte Carlo codes in their curriculum as these codes are widely used in research. At the School of Engineering Physics of the University of Wollongong, we designed and set in place a Geant4 course addressed to the Medical Physics domain. In this paper, we illustrate the main features of the course and its development since 2010. The design of this course maybe adopted to teach Geant4 or any other Monte Carlo code, and in general to teach complex software tools to students with limited computing background. …

Global: Are Branch Campuses Serving Students Well?, Stephen Wilkins, Melodena Stephens Balakrishnan

University of Wollongong in Dubai - Papers

The academic literature and professional journals both reveal no shortage of criticisms of the international branch campus. Yet each year more branches are established around the world, and existing campuses continue to expand. So it seems that there must be a demand for these campuses. But how well are they actually serving students? It is interesting that the growth of student numbers at international branch campuses does not seem to have affected enrolments at the home campuses of Western universities. This implies that branch campuses have found a new, additional demand for higher education.

The Use Of Team-Based Learning As An Approach To Increased Engagement And Learning For Marketing Students: A Case Study, Paul Chad

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Marketing educators are often faced with poor preclass preparation by students, declining student interest in attending classes as the semester progresses, and student complaints regarding previous bad experiences with team assessment activities. Teambased learning (TBL) is an innovative teaching strategy using semiformalized guidelines aimed to enhance student engagement and improve teamwork and, hence, overcome the typical problems faced by educators. This case study examines the firsttime use of TBL in a postgraduate marketing subject at an Australian university. The results indicate that the TBL innovation has a positive influence on student engagement and offers opportunities to assist learning. The study …

The Impact Of Students' Exploration Strategies In Discovery-Based Instructional Software, Barney Dalgarno, Gregor Kennedy, Sue Bennett

Faculty of Education - Papers (Archive)

Active learning is a key element of constructivist learning theory and has been used as an argument for employing discovery-based designs with instructional software. On the other hand, researchers have highlighted empirical evidence showing that 'pure' discovery- based learning is of limited value. This suggests that how learners interact is important in predicting whether learning occurs. This paper reports on a study of 158 university students who each used two instructional simulations - one with a discovery-based design and the other with a tutorial-based design. Students' learning outcomes were assessed via pre-tests and program were recorded and coded as either …

Supporting The Language And Learning Development Of Eal Students In Australian Higher Education, Paul J. Moore

Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education) - Papers

The role of learning advising in improving the educational outcomes of students for whom English is an additional language (EAL) in Australian universities has received significant attention in recent years. A combination of research findings, governmental pressure and media scrutiny has provided renewed impetus for universities to address issues of language proficiency and academic literacy amongst the growing population of onshore international students for whom English is an additional language (EAL). In this paper, I discuss the role of academic language and learning advising in the Australian university context, including how this practice is influenced by a range of political, …

An Innovative Osce Clinical Log Station: A Quantitative Study Of Its Influence On Log Use By Medical Students, Judith N. Hudson, Helen Rienits, Linda Corrin, Martin Olmos

Faculty of Science, Medicine and Health - Papers: part A

Background A Clinical Log was introduced as part of a medical student learning portfolio, aiming to develop a habit of critical reflection while learning was taking place, and provide feedback to students and the institution on learning progress. It was designed as a longitudinal self-directed structured record of student learning events, with reflection on these for personal and professional development, and actions planned or taken for learning. As incentive was needed to encourage student engagement, an innovative Clinical Log station was introduced in the OSCE, an assessment format with established acceptance at the School. This study questions: How does an …

Rural Placements Are Effective For Teaching Medicine In Australia: Evaluation Of A Cohort Of Students Studying In Rural Placements, H H. Birden, I Wilson

Faculty of Science, Medicine and Health - Papers: part A

Introduction: Medical education in Australia is increasingly delivered through longitudinal placements in general practice and other community settings. Early meaningful exposure to patients has been shown to improve the transition from medical student to junior doctor. This study examines the experience of the first year cohort of the University of Western Sydney (UWS) Medical School long-term rural placement students. Results have been placed in the context of other published results for rural training schemes, comparing and contrasting the present results to those of others. Methods: Students undertaking a rural placement in their final year of the UWS medical program (n=21) …

Using Research To Identify Teaching And Learning Innovations That Will Better Prepare Nursing Students For Professional Practice, Dominique Parrish, Kay Crookes, Patrick A. Crookes

Faculty of Science, Medicine and Health - Papers: part A

In Australia, data is collected by universities across students' institutional tenure to measure and monitor student learning, engagement and experience (DEEWR 2009). This data is often used to assess the performance of a subject, course, faculty or university and also to inform potential marketing materials and campaigns. However, there is very little data (if any) collected to enable universities to assess how well their educational programmes are preparing students for professional practice. This paper is based on a pilot study that aimed to address this gap by asking recent university graduates to provide some feedback on how their undergraduate nursing …

Doing Participatory Action Research And Doing A Phd: Words Of Encouragement For Prospective Students, Natascha Klocker

Faculty of Science - Papers (Archive)

No abstract provided.

A Qualitative Analysis Of Medical Students Views Of Their First Psychiatry Rotation, Nagesh Brahmavar Pai, Shae-Leigh C. Vella, Kerry Dawes

Graduate School of Medicine - Papers (Archive)

Objective: The importance of student's perspectives in informing curricula and pedagogy has long been recognised. However, student's perspectives are rarely reported in the academic literature. Therefore this study explores and reports on medical student's perspectives of their first psychiatry clinical rotation in a 'new' era medical school in Australia. Method: Seventy-three graduate entry medical students completed a semi-structured questionnaire about their experiences during a mental health rotation. The responses were analysed and coded into thematic categories. Results: The following thematic categories were evident; staff, breadth of experience, attitudes towards mental health, course materials and structure, and professional development. Conclusion: The …

Increasing Medical Students' Capacity To Practice Evidence-Based Medicine Through Improving Student Participation And Interest In Journal Club, Warren C. Rich, Judy Mullan, Kathryn M. Weston, Peter L. Mclennan

Graduate School of Medicine - Papers (Archive)

Research indicates that graduating doctors believe they are deficient in the skills needed to become evidence-based practitioners. To address this the University of Wollongong’s new Graduate School of Medicine has embedded research and critical analysis (RCA) skills into the case-based curriculum. A key component of the RCA curriculum is improving the medical students’ critical appraisal skills by participating in Journal Club during their first phase of the course. Feedback from the first two student cohorts participating in Journal Club suggested that it was not important or interesting.

To increase the level of interest, enthusiasm and participation in Journal Club peer-assessment …

Practice Nurses Experiences Of Mentoring Undergraduate Nursing Students In Australian General Practice, Elizabeth J. Halcomb, Kathleen Peters, Susan Mcinnes

Faculty of Science, Medicine and Health - Papers: part A

Internationally, the delivery of health services has shifted from secondary to primary care, necessitating an exponential growth of the nursing workforce and expansion of the nursing role in general practice. This growth, and the subsequent need to develop this workforce, has created a need to expose undergraduate nurses to general practice nursing as a viable career option. Concurrently, universities are struggling to find sufficient clinical places for their undergraduate students to gain clinical experience. It is logical, therefore, to increase the number of undergraduate nursing student placements in general practice. Through qualitative research methods, this paper seeks to explore the …

A Hangover And A One-Night Stand: Alcohol And Risky Sexual Behaviour Among Female Students At An Australian University, Heidi Gilchrist, Kylie Smith, Christopher A. Magee, Sandra Jones

Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences - Papers (Archive)

There is a growing body of research in Australia exploring the alcohol consumption behaviours of young people and the attendant health and social risks associated with excessive use of alcohol (Chikritzhs et al. 2003; Mancina-Pena & Tyson 2007). A number of studies from countries such as the United States and New Zealand indicate that university students tend to drink at riskier levels than the broader population (see for example Wechsler et al. 1994; Kypri, Stephenson & Langley 2005; Wechsler & Nelson 2008). Data from Australia are limited, although the few studies that have been conducted suggest that Australian university students …

How Well Are International Branch Campuses Serving Students?, Stephen Wilkins, Melodena Stephens Balakrishnan

University of Wollongong in Dubai - Papers

The academic literature and professional journals both reveal no shortage of criticisms of the international branch campus. Yet, each year, more branches are established all around the world, and existing campuses continue to expand. So, it seems that there must be a demand for these campuses. But how well are they actually serving students? It is interesting that the growth of student numbers at international branch campuses does not seem to have affected enrollments at the home campuses of Western universities. This implies that branch campuses have found a new, additional demand for higher education.

Peer Assessments Of Gpw: Infusing Fairness Into Students' Assessments Of Peer Contributions, Okey Peter Onyia, Stephanie Allen

University of Wollongong in Dubai - Papers

This paper contains results of an empirical study that tested the efficacy and acceptability of two templates designed to fully involve students in proper and fair peer-assessments of their group project work (GPW) by providing concrete evidence of independent progressive documentation of their peers' contributions to the work-process and end-product(s). Two compatible templates - the Progressive Evaluation Template (PET) and the Peer Assessment Criteria Template (PACT) - were developed to enable students provide progressive documentation of their peers' contributions to the student-led group project process in order to support the marks they award their peers and, at the same time, …

Why (Not) Alcohol Energy Drinks? A Qualitative Study With Australian University Students, Sandra C. Jones, Lance R. Barrie, Nina J. Berry

Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Introduction and Aims. Alcohol energy drinks (AEDs) are a recent entry to the ready-to-drink market, but there is an absence of research into the reasons young people consume these products and their consumption-related experiences.The aim of the current study was to investigate university students’ perceptions of, and experiences with, pre-mixed AEDs.

Design and Methods. Four focus groups with undergraduate university students in a large regional city in New South Wales; with transcripts coded for key themes.

Results.Participants reported a number of benefits of AED consumption,many of which were similar to other ready-to-drinks, such as taste and image. However, the primary …