Education Commons^™

Australian universities are experiencing a period of unprecedented complexity in providing quality higher education experiences for an increasingly diverse student body. Institutions are grappling with ways to tackle and respond to conflating pressures of reduced resourcing, Federal government participation targets, flexibility of provision and increased accountability. Universities are increasingly turning to online learning spaces as a solution to these challenges. This paper first provides a rationale for the conceptual frameworks used in the research design. It then presents the findings from the first phase of a mixed-method study which investigated first year students' experiences of online assessment at an Australian …

Increasing regulatory and financial pressures combined with heightened demand for education brought about by the faster paced economic development of India and China and proliferation of multiple social media is placing enormous pressure on tertiary education organisations to provide a quality, low cost education to the masses. Online offerings play an important role in this regard, as does the associated online assessment. The introduction of wholly online Bachelor of Business offerings at an Australian university in 2013, combined with a lack of studies into students' perceptions of on-line assessment stimulated this research. This paper compares the initial results of the …

There is increasing interest in the use of social media networking sites such as Facebook in engaging higher education students in learning and the broader university experience. Research indicates that Facebook has over 100 million active users worldwide, over half of whom log on to the site twice per day. The potential reach and opportunities for wide engagement in using social media is clear. However, institutions have approached its use with understandable caution given the very public and interconnected nature of these "risky" virtual spaces. Many universities have specific and explicit reference in their communications and code of conduct policies …

Indigenous literacy policy implementation in Queensland schools. The persistence of poor literacy outcomes for Indigenous students in Australia has been an educational policy focus for successive federal and state governments for decades. This book charts the implementation over three years through the perspectives of teachers, principals and administrators. It provides both a social archive and unique insight into policy implementation dynamics as they play out in systems and schools and gives understanding of the relationships between social contexts and educational outcomes for Indigenous students who do not speak English as their home language. Further, it gives voice to marginalised voices …