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The Australian Council For Educational Research (Acer) Response To The Australian Universities Accord Panel Interim Report, Australian Council For Educational Research (Acer)

Higher education research

The Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) recognises the importance of universities, and the higher education sector more broadly, to the prosperity and success of Australia. ACER welcomes the intent and focus of the Universities Accord in creating a system that enables all Australians to consider the option of university education and be supported in embracing this opportunity. In our submission to the Accord Panel, we would like to provide reflection and insight into the following key areas:

• Recognising the higher education ‘life cycle’ begins well before university enrolment.
• Continuing to build the emphasis on equality of opportunity and equity-focussed …

Rethinking Assessment In Response To Generative Artificial Intelligence, Jacob Pearce, Neville Chiavaroli

Higher education research

The use of decision-making support tools during assessments, such as electronic differential diagnosis in examinations, is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how technology is currently changing assessment practice. We have reached a transformative stage in the development of artificial intelligence (AI). We can no longer rely on non-invigilated assessments and submitted ‘artefacts’ to demonstrate student learning and competence. This is bringing many long-term demands on educators, course coordinators and curriculum designers, forcing us to rethink assessment approaches. Going forward, we see an important distinction between ‘assisted’ assessments and ‘unassisted’ assessments. With the recent increase and …

Australian General Practice Training Program: National Report On The 2022 National Registrar Survey, Rebecca Taylor, Leyna Clarke, Ali Radloff

Higher education research

The Australian General Practice Training National Registrar Survey (AGPT NRS) is an annual, national survey of GP registrars currently training in the AGPT program. It collects information via an online questionnaire about registrar satisfaction, experience and future career plans. It also collects information about registrars’ demographics and training contexts and other aspects of their training experience. This survey is part of the Department of Health and Aged Care’s (the Department) monitoring and quality improvement activities. From June 27 until August 12, 2022, the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) administered the AGPT NRS to registrars enrolled in active training on …

A Formative Evaluation Of The Program For Student Representatives In A University Discipline Panel, Diana Genevive Layag

International Conference on Assessment and Learning (ICAL)

The university employs a representation of different sectors in the academic community when dealing with major student conduct violations. Among them is the representative of the students. At the time of the study, the student representatives were qualified students who were recruited and trained to become part of the university discipline case conference panel. Upon successful completion of the training, these students were appointed to be members of a program for the pool of student representatives who sit as part of the university adjudicating body, which makes decisions for the university student discipline cases. Terminally, the researcher wanted to improve …

Australian General Practice Training Program: National Report On The 2021 National Registrar Survey, Rebecca Taylor, Leyna Clarke, Ali Radloff

Higher education research

The Australian General Practice Training National Registrar Survey (AGPT NRS) is an annual, national survey of GP registrars currently training in the AGPT program. It collects information via an online questionnaire about registrar satisfaction, experience and future career plans. It also collects information about registrars’ demographics and training contexts and other aspects of their training experience. This survey is part of the Department of Health’s (the Department) monitoring and quality improvement activities. The information collected in the AGPT NRS can be used to assure the quality of training provision in the program, enables continuous improvement and allows responses to be …

Australian General Practice Training Program: National Report On The 2020 National Registrar Survey, Rebecca Taylor, Leyna Clarke, Ali Radloff

Higher education research

The Australian General Practice Training National Registrar Survey (AGPT NRS) is an annual, national survey of GP registrars currently training in the AGPT program. It collects information via an online questionnaire about registrar satisfaction, experience and future career plans. It also collects information about registrars’ demographics and training contexts and other aspects of their training experience. This survey is part of the Department of Health’s (the Department) monitoring and quality improvement activities. From October 12 to December 9, 2020, the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) administered the AGPT NRS to registrars enrolled in active training on the AGPT program …

A Man Of Measure And More: John P. Keeves 1924-2020, Petra Lietz Ed., Katherine Dix Ed., Juliet Young-Thornton Ed.

Shannon Research Press

John Philip Keeves was an eminent researcher with a lifelong quest to improve teaching and learning by being a researcher, teacher, supervisor and mentor. He produced a myriad of scholarly publications, many on topics of research design, comparative research and educational measurement. In 1962, John was recruited to the Australian Council for Educational Research and he moved to Melbourne, later becoming Associate Director from 1972 to 1977 and then Director until his retirement in 1984. During this time, he also undertook research fellowships at the Australian National University and the Institute of International Education in the University of Stockholm. After …

Assessment In The Interpersonal Domain: Experiences From Empathy Assessment In Medical Education, Neville Chiavaroli

2009 - 2019 ACER Research Conferences

Frameworks for the teaching and assessment of 21st-century skills commonly recognise the importance of learning and skill development in the interpersonal domain. They also usually acknowledge the challenge of reliably and validly assessing students in this domain. In the field of medical education and in selecting students for medical courses, the concept of empathy has become central to representing the particular interpersonal understandings and skills expected of students and practising doctors. Attempts to assess these attributes during medical training are just as challenging as in school contexts. This presentation draws on several years’ experience of working with medical educators to …

International Graduate Outcomes Survey 2018 Final Report, Darren Matthews, Ali Radloff, Jo Doyle, Leyna Clarke

Higher education research

The 2018 International Graduates Outcomes Survey (IGOS) provides an insight into international graduates from Australian universities post-study employment, work readiness, and reflections on course experiences, study motivation and overall satisfaction. Over 10,000 international students who graduated from an Australian university in the last decade (international graduates) were asked a range of questions about their current employment status and their opinions on their Australian qualification. In brief the results indicate that: 90 per cent of graduates who are available for employment are currently employed - incorporating 93 per cent who returned home and 85 percent who were still in Australia; 77 …

Australian Higher Education Equity Ranking Project: Final Report, Tim Pitman, Paul Koshy, Daniel Edwards, Liang-Cheng Zhang, Julie Mcmillan

Higher education research

This report details the findings of a feasibility study for the Department of Education and Training (DET) into the development of a higher education student equity ranking index. The purpose of study was to determine whether it was possible to measure higher education equity performance at the institutional level and convey each institution’s relative performance through an ‘equity rank’. The ranking was to be based on institutional performance in regard to equity-group students, including students from low socio-economic backgrounds; students from regional/remote areas of Australia; Indigenous students; students with disability; and students from non-English speaking backgrounds.

The Japan University Experience Survey (Jues), Darren Matthews, Leyna Clarke

Higher education research

An overview of the Japan University Experience Survey (JUES) including its background and aims, and the ACER - Kawaijuku Group partnership. The presentation discusses the development, delivery, reporting and results of the survey, and considers Japanese and Australian UES/SES comparisons and the potential for benchmarking.

Assessment Of University Support Services For Regional And Remote Students On Transition To University: Final Report, Darren Matthews, Gina Milgate, Leyna Clarke

Higher education research

This report details the development and piloting of an Assessment of university support services for regional and remote students on transition to university. The project forms part of the Australian Government’s response to the Independent Review into Regional, Rural and Remote Education led by Emeritus Professor John Halsey. In its recommendations, the Review highlighted how critical it is to “Support RRR [regional, rural and remote] students to make successful transitions from school to university, training, employment and combinations of them”. In relation to this recommendation, this project is designed to support the Australian Government’s response to the Halsey Review by …

Designing Rubrics For Authentic Assessment, Kathryn Richardson, Anne-Marie Chase

Teacher education

This presentation looks at the steps in developing authentic rubrics, from determining the constructs that will be assessed; breaking down the constructs into a set of broad capabilities that need to be observed; transferring capabilities into indicative behaviours (indicators or criteria); and determining the different levels of proficiency.

The Case For Urgency: Advocating For Indigenous Voice In Education, Kevin P. Gillan, Suzanne Mellor, Jacynta Krakouer

Australian Education Review

In 2004 the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) published an Australian Education Review (AER) on Indigenous Education: The Case for Change: A review of contemporary research on Indigenous education outcomes, AER 47 (Mellor & Corrigan, 2004). In the 13 years since its publication, the state of Indigenous education outcomes has remained substantially unaltered. All the social indicators demonstrate that Australia’s First Nations people continue to be the most socio-economically disadvantaged population cohort in Australian society. This is after decades of continued policy efforts by successive Commonwealth, state and territory governments to ameliorate Indigenous education disadvantage. We still struggle with …

What Do Employers Really Want? Helping Vocational Learners Crack The Code, Kate Perkins

Transition and Post-School Education and Training

In the majority of vocational qualifications, assessment of competence incorporates a structured work placement (SWP). Increasingly, host employers are using these placements as part of recruitment strategies, particularly for entry level roles. In effect, the placement is becoming the new ‘interview’, and the new interview is morphing into an extended audition where a learner’s non-technical, ‘employability’ skills may play a critical role. But do learners know what their host employers are really looking for, and to what extent are their training programs helping them to develop and demonstrate the skills that are most likely to influence an employer’s recruitment decisions? …

Investigating The Relationship Between Equity And Graduate Outcomes In Australia, Sarah Richardson, Dawn Bennett, Lynne Roberts

Higher education research

Australian higher education equity policy focusses mostly on access and participation with the implicit assumption that disadvantage will be ameliorated through educational achievement. Less is known as to whether patterns of disadvantage continue post-completion. In a context in which graduate employability is becoming an important yardstick against which to measure institutional effectiveness, this question is of fundamental importance to higher education equity practitioners and policymakers. This study employed Commonwealth graduate outcome data to investigate relationships between disadvantage and graduate outcomes in Australia, with disadvantage defined as a graduate belonging to one or more of the following groups – low SES, …

Developing A Global Health Assessment Collaboration: Ancillary Report, Daniel Edwards, Jacob Pearce, David Wilkinson

Higher education research

This document reports on a project designed to develop an assessment collaboration between medical schools in both Australia and the United Kingdom. The project was funded by the Office for Learning and Teaching (OLT), utilising surplus funding from a broader assessment collaboration project – the Australian Medical Assessment Collaboration (OLT ID12-2482). The Global Health Assessment Collaboration (GHAC) involved five universities in Australia and the United Kingdom (UK). It developed an assessment framework and item specifications, undertook assessment item drafting workshops, built in a process of review and resulted in the development of a focused suite of assessment items. This report …

National Research On The Postgraduate Student Experience : Case Presentation: Volume 1: First Year Postgraduate Student Experience, Gary Hamlin, Shelley Kinash, Linda Crane, Amy Bannatyne, Madelaine-Marie Judd, Ashley Stark, Bill Eckersley, Helen Partridge, Ken Udas

Higher education research

This is volume one of a set of case studies that explore the postgraduate student experience. The theme of this case study is first year postgraduate student experience and is based on experiences derived from student engagement breakfasts, interviews, and focus groups with 366 people across the stakeholder groups of postgraduate students, educators, and university executives from 26 institutions. The case studies constitute part of the output from the project, Engaging postgraduate students and supporting higher education to enhance the 21st century student experience.

National Research On The Postgraduate Student Experience : Case Presentation : Volume 2 : Postgraduate Student Diversity, Bill Eckersley, Linda Crane, Shelley Kinash, Amy Bannatyne, Gary Hamlin, Helen Partridge, Sarah Richardson, Harry Rolf, Ken Udas

Higher education research

This is volume two of a set of three case studies that explore the postgraduate student experience. The theme of this case study is postgraduate student diversity and is based on experiences derived from student engagement breakfasts, interviews, and focus groups with 366 people across the stakeholder groups of postgraduate students, educators, and university executives from 26 institutions. The case studies constitute part of the output from the project, Engaging postgraduate students and supporting higher education to enhance the 21st century student experience.

National Learning And Teaching Resource Audit And Classification Final Report, Philip Hider, Barney Dalgarno, Sue Bennett, Ying-Hsang Liu, Carole Gerts, Carla Daws, Barbara Spiller, Pru Mitchell, Robert Parkes, Raylee Macaulay

Information Management

The Australian Office for Learning and Teaching's (OLT) research repository is used to disseminate the results of higher education research. This is the final report of a project that investigated how the resources in the research repository should be described and indexed so that they could be accessed more effectively. The project team ascertained which attributes of the resources needed to be described and how they should be described, developed a metadata schema, selected and/or created appropriate indexing vocabularies and reindexed the resources.

Hacking Assessment, Phillip Dawson

2009 - 2019 ACER Research Conferences

Hackers exploit weaknesses in a system to achieve their own goals. In this paper I argue that hacking presents a significant threat to the growing world of online assessment. This threat needs to be addressed through a variety of means; technological anti-hacking approaches will not be sufficient. The most effective ways to prevent hacking may be changes to the assessment tasks themselves to make hacking less tempting; these approaches also have a range of positive side effects in terms of authenticity, transparency of criteria, and ensuring tasks involve work beyond the exam. I conclude with a brief exploration of the …

Building Connections In South East Asia, Sarah Richardson

International Developments

Sarah Richardson reports on ACER’s recent collaborative work with institutions in South East Asia to support higher education.

Profiling Diversity Of Australian Universities, Hamish Coates, Daniel Edwards, Leo Goedegebuure, Marian Thakur, Eva Van Der Brugge, Frans Van Vught

Higher education research

There is a good deal of consensus that institutional diversity in higher education is a good thing. Simply put, systems with more diverse institutions perform better than systems with less diverse institutions. Yet the overall diversity of Australia’s higher education system remains unclear. Significant questions and opportunities remain unresolved. How diverse are Australia’s institutions today? How can stakeholders— particularly institutions and policymakers—understand and manage this diversity? This LH Martin Institute and ACER research briefing seeks to shift discussion of diversity to a more considered level. The analysis moves beyond extant sectoral partitionings and contingent policy interventions to expose emerging dynamics …

The Australian Medical Assessment Collaboration: Developing The Foundations For A National Assessment Of Medical Student Learning Outcomes, David Wilkinson, Daniel Edwards, Hamish Coates, Ben Canny, Jacob Pearce, Jennifer Schaefer, Tracey Papinczak, Lindy Mcallister

Higher education research

In late December 2010 the Australian Learning and Teaching Council Ltd (ALTC) provided a grant to The University of Queensland along with the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) and Monash University to develop foundations for a national assessment that evaluates the learning outcomes of later‐year medical students in Australia. The project, titled ‘Developing the foundation for a national assessment of medical student learning outcomes’ responds to the growing need to prove and improve the standards of medical education by establishing an Australian Medical Assessment Collaboration (AMAC). This project includes scoping work, wide‐ranging sector engagement, development of an assessment framework, …

Literature Review Relating To The Current Context And Discourse Of Indigenous Tertiary Education In Australia, Michele Lonsdale, Greta Rollo, Jenny Wilkinson, Ali Radloff, Stephanie Armstrong, Gina Milgate, Jenny Trevitt

Indigenous Education Research

This review outlines some of the themes that have emerged in the growing global discourse of Indigenous education in the higher education sector. The past decade and a half have seen increased numbers of Indigenous students and academic staff in universities, a proliferation of publications exploring Indigenous issues in the academy, and heightened interest in the nature and meaning of Indigenous knowledge and studies.

This review examined information provided by 22 Australian universities to gain a picture of the research fields and topics that are attracting most interest from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander graduates and academics. It also reviewed …

Annual Transitions Between Labour Market States For Young Australians, Hielke Buddelmeyer, Gary N. Marks

Transition and Post-School Education and Training

This study uses an annual timeframe to evaluate the influence of labour market status in one period on status in the subsequent period. Understanding the role of past labour market experiences is important when it is the objective of policy-makers to increase the proportion of time spent by young Australians in desirable labour market states, such as full-time work, and reduce the time they spend in marginalised activities, such as unemployment. These concerns are heightened during lean economic times, but they never really go away. A natural question that may arise, especially in a weak labour market for youth, is …

Australasian Student Engagement Survey 2009 Institution Report, Ali Radloff, Hamish Coates

Australasian Survey of Student Engagement (AUSSE)

No abstract provided.

Harnessing Educational Cooperation In The Eas For Regional Competitiveness And Community Building, Phillip Mckenzie, Robert Horne, Andrew Dowling, Adrian Beavis

International Education Research

At the Second East Asia Summit (EAS) meeting held in 2007, the 16 Country Leaders agreed to strengthen regional educational cooperation. Acting on behalf of the EAS, the ASEAN Secretariat has commissioned this project to develop strategies for EAS participants to enhance regional economic competitiveness and strengthen community building in a balanced and sustainable manner through cooperation in education. The project’s scope encompasses regional cooperation in basic education (primary and secondary), technical and vocational education and training, and higher education. This report draws on a literature review of experiences with international educational cooperation, analysis of published data, consultations with education …

Adult Education In Post-War Australia, Colin Robert Badger

Future of Education

It cannot be denied that we will need more and more adult education in post-war Australia. There are many encouraging signs that the people of Australia are becoming aware of the deficiencies of their educational systems, and that reform and reconstruction, long overdue, will be bought about by the steady pressure of public opinion. There is a strong demand for a general raising of the school leaving age, for revised and better curricula, for better professional training for teachers, and for far more liberal provision of school buildings and equipment. And there is, fortunately, an increasingly strong demand for adult …

Universities In Australia., Eric Ashby

Future of Education

The author states that the purpose of writing this piece is to put before the Australian public the case for universities. It is directed to parents who want their children to get a degree; to industrialists who employ (or refuse to employ) university men and women; to those public servants who look on graduates with suspicion and to those politicians who look on them with contempt. [p.5, ed]

This essay deals with the problems which Australian universities face. [p.6, ed]

It deals with issues of attitudes towards Australian universities, subjects, curriculum, barriers to entry and much more.