Education Commons^™

The Same But Different: Reframing Contemporary Online Education In Higher Education Towards Quality And Integrity, Maria T. Northcote

Maria Northcote

The field of online learning, like many other technological innovations, has not burgeoned without controversy. Despite the debates about the role and value of online learning, it has continued to grow in many sectors, especially in higher education. Alongside the growth of online learning, discussions about its benefits and limitations have also flourished, and many studies have investigated the quality and integrity of online courses. This chapter offers an investigation of some of the history of online learning, concluding with a collection of practical recommendations and suggestions for future research directions to guide institutions embarking on online learning programs.

A Health Check Of Avondale's Distance Education Program: Where Have We Been? Where Are We Going Next?, Jason Hinze, Maria T. Northcote, Peter W. Kilgour, Beverly Christian, David Bolton

Maria Northcote

Avondale College of Higher Education has been offering tertiary courses for over 120 years. In the past two decades, this institution has extended its programs to include distance courses for students who opt to study online or are not able to attend on-campus courses at Avondale’s Lake Macquarie and Sydney campuses. While all of the institutions courses are evaluated on a regular basis, no formal evaluation had ever been undertaken of the distance education program as a whole. During 2017, a mixed methods research project was conducted to gather evaluative data from recent and current distance students using questionnaires and …

Integrating The Scholarship Of Teaching, Learning And Assessment Into One Institution’S Homegrown Professional Learning Resources, Maria T. Northcote, Anthony Williams, Kevin Petrie, John Seddon, Sherry J. Hattingh

Maria Northcote

Many professional learning (PL) programs in universities aspire to support tertiary educators to perform duties associated with teaching, student learning and assessment. Additionally, because much of a university academic’s work is associated with conducting scholarly research and supervising students’ research, PL programs also need to provide support associated with supervision and research activities. Faced with these multiple PL demands, one small Australian higher education institution developed a suite of resources to support faculty teaching staff and researchers in their professional capacities using a heuristic (self-determined) approach to resource development. The content of the resources drew on the principles of the …

How Are They Going?: A Project To Monitor Student Engagement, Anthony Williams, Maria T. Northcote, John Reddin

Maria Northcote

The transition from school or work to university studies is not always a smooth change for many students. The university context may appear threatening, strange and isolating for some students, whether the courses be offered in on-campus or online contexts. While most modern day universities offer a raft of support services for students, including both academic and non-academic services, problems of low retention and high attrition rates still plague some institutions and some sections of particular institutions in the higher education sector. This paper presents an innovative program that uses technology-supported strategies within a regular learning management system (LMS) to …

Getting On The Online Education Train: The Journey Of A Small Higher Education Institution, Anthony Williams, Maria T. Northcote

Maria Northcote

Many universities have instituted professional learning centres that support academic teaching staff in their capacity to facilitate student-centred learning. Some of these centres also extend their reach to incorporate scholarship and research. This paper reports on one such case, in which a small higher education institution in Australia established what has become known as the Centre for Advancement of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (CASTL). From its inception, the CASTL’s intentions have been multi-dimensional, in that its programs, activities and resource development span the following areas of scholarship: 1) learning and teaching; 2) researcher education and support of postgraduate …

Accounting Academic Workloads In The Higher Education Sector: Balancing Workload Creep To Avoid Depreciation, Lisa Barnes, Warrick R. Long, Maria T. Northcote, Anthony Williams

Maria Northcote

Accounting Academics according to the literature are subject to external influences such as preparing graduates for future workplaces, bridging the gap between industry and academia and development of pathways to becoming professional accountants for their student cohort. Add to this the internal influences of delivery methods for student engagement, work integrated learning and casualization of the workforce, the accounting academic is at capacity in terms of how these influences impact on workload. Using the “lived experience”, this research delves further into the academic themselves to find that they categorise their workload into four themes of Teaching, Research, Accounting academic administration …

The Virtual Mentor Program: An Initiative To Support First-Year Students And Students At Risk, Anthony Williams, Maria T. Northcote, Peter W. Kilgour, Ben Stewart

Maria Northcote

The college/university culture of study is rarely the same as high school, making the transition difficult even for talented students. In many countries, the massification of higher education has opened up education to all, with the only limiting factor being a student’s ability to meet entry requirements and pay for subjects. A virtual mentor program can provide support to all first-year students regardless of whether they are in online, blended, or traditional learning environments. One such initiative, implemented by The University of Newcastle in Newcastle, Australia, and later by Avondale College of Higher Education in Cooranbung, Australia, also supported students …

What Skills Do I Need To Teach Online? Researching Experienced Teacher Views Of Essential Knowledge And Skills In Online Pedagogy As A Foundation For Designing Professional Development For Novice Teachers, Catherine Mcloughlin, Maria T. Northcote

Maria Northcote

As e-Learning continues to dominate educational services globally, the domain of online pedagogy continues to expand, and teaching in online, blended and hybrid classrooms now considered an essential element of teacher education in the many parts of Europe, Canada and the US. As a result, the need for professional development of higher education teachers has never been greater. An important precursor to designing effective teacher preparation programs is to establish what novice teachers need to know and do to be successful in virtual teaching spaces. The idea that professional development for online teaching needs to focus on instructional and communicative …

Using Threshold Concepts About Online Teaching To Support Novice Online Teachers: Designing Professional Development Guidelines To Individually Assist Academic Staff (“Me”) And Collectively Guide The Institution (“Us”), Maria T. Northcote, Kevin P. Gosselin, Peter W. Kilgour, Catherine Mcloughlin, Christopher Boddey

Maria Northcote

As online learning expands across the higher education sector, individual university lecturers are required to take on roles that incorporate responsibilities for designing and teaching online courses. Their growing capacities to fulfil these roles are sometimes supported by professional development (PD) programs within their institutions while some staff engage in staff development activities outside their home institutions. These programs and activities may take place within Communities of Practice (CoPs) while others are conducted on an individual basis. While much research has been undertaken into the field of online teaching and learning, including investigations into the most useful technological tools to …

Using The Perceptions Of Online University Students To Improve The Pedagogy And Practice Of Distance Educators: Them Helping Us To Improve It, David Bolton, Maria T. Northcote, Peter W. Kilgour, Jason Hinze

Maria Northcote

This paper reports on the findings of an investigation into the experiences of undergraduate and postgraduate distance education students from one higher education institution, Avondale College of Higher Education. All of the institution's current students who were enrolled in a distance course or who had previously completed a distance component of their course were surveyed using an online questionnaire. A subgroup of this population also contributed to focus group discussions. Findings from an analysis of the combined data gathered from the online questionnaire and the focus groups were used to inform the institution's professional development (PD) program that supports lecturers …

Towards Engaging Students In Curriculum Transformation: What Are The Effective Characteristics Of Rubrics?, Anthony Williams, Maria T. Northcote, Jason K. Morton, Jack Seddon

Maria Northcote

Rubrics are tools commonly used by educators to accurately and consistently mark student assessments and communicate achieved learning outcomes. The teachers, having a clear understanding of the assessment's intended learning outcomes, have traditionally constructed rubrics; however, an enhanced shared understanding of an assessment’s outcomes has the potential to be achieved if rubrics are developed as a collaboration between staff and students. Such practices provide potential for assessment, and its subsequent feedback, to be more highly valued by students not simply as an end-point, but rather as an opportunity for them to be active in their own learning, this becoming a …

How Engaged Are Our Students? Using Analytics To Identify Students-At-Risk, Anthony Williams, Jason K. Morton, Peter W. Kilgour, Maria T. Northcote

Maria Northcote

Learning Management System (LMS) analytics have become an area of increasing interest and development. The potential to better understand our students’ levels of engagement provided by the systems have, to date, has been underutilized information resources. The study reported here looks at the relationship of student and staff engagement in the LMS and considers the levels of predictability in student behavior leading to failure. Also considered is the impact of the lecturer on the student engagement of poor and high performing students.

How Are They Going?: A Project To Monitor Student Engagement, Anthony Williams, Maria T. Northcote, John Reddin

Maria Northcote

The transition from school or work to university studies is not always a smooth change for many students. The university context may appear threatening, strange and isolating for some students, whether the courses be offered in on-campus or online contexts. While most modern day universities offer a raft of support services for students, including both academic and non-academic services, problems of low retention and high attrition rates still plague some institutions and some sections of particular institutions in the higher education sector. This paper presents an innovative program that uses technology-supported strategies within a regular learning management system (LMS) to …

Online Learning In Higher Education: Comparing Teacher And Learner Perspectives, Peter W. Kilgour, Maria T. Northcote

Maria Northcote

Higher education teachers’ and learners’ experiences of online teaching and online learning are tempered by their respective perceptions of their online educational environments. While much research has been undertaken in recent years to explore students’ or teachers’ perceptions of online education, less research has been conducted that investigates the perceptions of both groups in parallel contexts. Utilizing a mixed methods research approach, focus groups and questionnaires were administered to three cohorts of students and their teachers, across three institutions. Results are presented in terms of teachers’ and students’ perceptions of preferred online learning environments, including their most and least agreed …

Getting On The Online Education Train: The Journey Of A Small Higher Education Institution, Anthony Williams, Maria T. Northcote

Maria Northcote

Many universities have instituted professional learning centres that support academic teaching staff in their capacity to facilitate student-centred learning. Some of these centres also extend their reach to incorporate scholarship and research. This paper reports on one such case, in which a small higher education institution in Australia established what has become known as the Centre for Advancement of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (CASTL). From its inception, the CASTL’s intentions have been multi-dimensional, in that its programs, activities and resource development span the following areas of scholarship: 1) learning and teaching; 2) researcher education and support of postgraduate …

Integrating The Scholarship Of Teaching, Learning And Assessment Into One Institution’S Homegrown Professional Learning Resources, Maria Northcote, Anthony Williams, Kevin Petrie, John Seddon, Sherene Hattingh

Maria Northcote

Many professional learning (PL) programs in universities aspire to support tertiary educators to perform duties associated with teaching, student learning and assessment. Additionally, because much of a university academic’s work is associated with conducting scholarly research and supervising students’ research, PL programs also need to provide support associated with supervision and research activities. Faced with these multiple PL demands, one small Australian higher education institution developed a suite of resources to support faculty teaching staff and researchers in their professional capacities using a heuristic (self-determined) approach to resource development. The content of the resources drew on the principles of the …

Learning Thresholds: A Journey In Online Learning And Teaching, David P. Wilson, Peter Williams, Warrick R. Long, Maria T. Northcote

Maria Northcote

Three tertiary business educators transitioned their teaching from a just face-to-face mode of content delivery into online/blended content delivery formats. It was found there were three dominant domains of learning thresholds for these educators, which involved the course, student engagement and the teacher. The course domain considered alternative approaches to teaching and course design. The student domain focussed on student engagement and feedback. The teacher domain addressed teacher identity and interactions. Challenges faced by the educators included adopting a new paradigm of teaching, benchmarking efforts, and adequate resourcing. The positive transformative experience involved the educators gaining increased self-assurance in becoming …

Towards Engaging Students In Curriculum Transformation: What Are The Effective Characteristics Of Rubrics?, Anthony Williams, Maria T. Northcote, Jason K. Morton, Jack Seddon

Maria Northcote

This grant seeks to unpack the current use of rubrics in tertiary assessment, research the design of rubrics in collaboration with students, and disseminate ideas and recommendations. Our aims are to develop:

• a model of collaborative rubric practice (including design, use and moderation of rubrics)
• cross disciplinary case studies of collaborative rubric practice
• practical, research-informed recommendations for how to engage students in the collaborative process of designing, using and moderating assessment rubrics.

This published paper below is not connected to the grant but illustrates an ongoing interest in rubric construction and application. Bev Christian and Peter Kilgour have constructed professional …

Designing An Innovative System To Evaluate A Postgraduate Supervision Support And Development Framework, Kevin Petrie, Malcolm Anderson, Kayle De Waal, Brett G. Mitchell, Maria T. Northcote, Anthony Williams, Janet Carton

Maria Northcote

The supervision of a doctoral student engages the supervisor/s and the candidate in a professional learning and teaching relationship, described by some as the pedagogy of supervision (Grant, 2005; Nulty, Kiley, & Meyer, 2009). In the past few decades, many universities have developed ‘supervisor training’ programs and other innovations to support supervisors. These programs are designed to cultivate the necessary knowledge and skills to support academic and research staff to supervise postgraduate student(s) (Carton & Kelly, 2014; Carton, O’Farrell, & Kelly, 2013; Luca et al., 2013). As part of a project that was funded by an Office for Learning and …

What Offline And Online Technologies Do Higher Education Students Use To Complete Assessment Tasks?, Lynnette Lounsbury, David Bolton, Paula Mildenhall, Maria T. Northcote

Maria Northcote

A Personal Learning Environment (PLE) is a system, usually self-constructed, that enables learners to manage their own learning and may include tools, services, online resources and communities. The aim of the project: to determine which technologies students use when they prepare, complete and submit assessment tasks such as assignments and examinations. The participants (n=39): 24 students from Edith Cowan University in WA and 15 students from Avondale in NSW. All students were undergraduate, on-campus students from Education and Arts courses, mainly female, most were aged between 20-24 years. Previous research has defined PLEs (Dabbagh & Kitsantas, (2012), especially in social …

What Matters Most When Students And Teachers Use Interactive Whiteboards In Mathematics Classrooms?, Kimberley Mcquillan, Maria T. Northcote, Peter Beamish

Maria Northcote

As teachers, we are encouraged to immerse our students in rich and engaging learning environments (NSW Department of Education and Training, 2003). One teaching tool that can facilitate the creation of rich learning environments is the interactive whiteboard (IWB) (Baker, 2009). IWBs are quickly being introduced into schools across the nation and worldwide, and educators are exploring the implications of having them in the classroom. Of particular interest are student attitudes to the use of IWBs: what students think and feel about IWBs, and what factors matter most to students when IWBs are used in their classroom. Attitudes play an …

Using The Tpack Framework To Unite Disciplines In Online Learning, Alan Anderson, Nicholas Barham, Maria T. Northcote

Maria Northcote

This paper builds on a previous case study in which a group of lecturers from various disciplines were interviewed about their practice as facilitators of online learning. The lecturers' comments about their teaching practices revealed their awareness of specific types of teacher knowledge about online teaching. This was an unintended outcome of the previous study. Subsequently, as reported in this paper, the data were interrogated further using a new lens to investigate the extent to which these elements of teacher knowledge were evident throughout their practices. The technological, pedagogical and content knowledge (TPACK) theoretical framework enabled the researchers to identify …

What Mathematics Calculations Do Adults Do In Their Everyday Lives?: Part 1 Of A Report On The Everyday Mathematics Project, Maria T. Northcote, Linda Marshall

Maria Northcote

This first part of a report on the Everyday Mathematics Project presents information about the topics, frequency, amount, type, nature and methods used by adults in calculations in their everyday lives. This serves to demonstrate the relevance of primary school mathematics, especially in terms of mental computation and estimation strategies situated within authentic contexts.

Virtual Manipulatives On The Interactive Whiteboard: A Preliminary Investigation, Paula Mildenhall, Paul Swan, Maria Northcote, Linda Marshall

Maria Northcote

An outline of how virtual manipulatives and interactive whiteboards can be used in the classroom.

What Mathematics Do Adults Really Do In Everyday Life?, Maria Northcote, Alistair Mcintosh

Maria Northcote

A description of the Saucer Project at the Edith Cowan University is presented. The project is designed to find out what types of mathematical calculations adults do in their ordinary lives.

Using The Self-Determined Learning Principles Of Heutagogy To Support Academic Staff Who Are Learning To Teach Online, Maria T. Northcote, Chris Boddey

Maria Northcote

Tailored professional development (PD) programs assist university teaching staff to capitalize on the educational use of technology. To supplement on-campus PD support, staff at Avondale College of Higher Education developed a self-help online resource, Moodle's Little Helper (MLH), that has since become an integral and accepted component of the institution's PD landscape. Since Avondale's overall PD program is built upon the theoretical underpinnings of heutagogy (Hase, 2009; Hase & Kenyon, 2003), a self-determined learning theory, the purpose and nature of the resource also reflects the key principles of this educational philosophy. Adopting a utilisation-focused research methodology (Patton, 2011) ensured staff …

The Educational Beliefs Of A Group Of University Teachers And Their Students: Identification, Exploration And Comparison, Maria T. Northcote

Maria Northcote

The quality of teaching and learning in tertiary education contexts is influenced by many factors including the educational beliefs of the university teachers and students who teach and learn in such contexts. Most belief research in the tertiary education sector has, to date, reported on the teaching or learning beliefs of just teachers or the teaching or learning beliefs of just students. Much less research has explored the connections between the educational beliefs of these two groups. This research has aimed to extend the parameters of previous research by investigating the point of intersection between the educational beliefs of a …

Threshold Concepts About Online Teaching: Progress Report On A Five Year Project, Kevin P. Gosselin, Maria T. Northcote, Daniel Reynaud, Peter W. Kilgour, Malcolm Anderson, Chris Boddey

Maria Northcote

The burgeoning expansion of online education has presented the challenges of articulating an appropriate pedagogy for online education (Stevens, 2003; Runnels et al., 2006; Gosselin, 2009) while also contending with perceived and real deficits in lecturer competence (Shephard, 2007). Conceptually, the identified areas of concern are viewed as troublesome knowledge (Perkins, 1999), or knowledge that is counter intuitive to traditional teaching face to face teaching. To meet the emerging difficulties of new modes of distance teaching, researchers have focused on transformative learning using threshold concepts, or new portals, that allow understanding of concepts through new modes of thinking (Meyer & …

Use Of Cognitive Tools As Support Mechanisms For Adult Indigenous Learners In An Online Mathematics Unit, Maria T. Northcote, Linda Marshall, Max Lenoy

Maria Northcote

The staff at Kurongkurl Katitjin (the School of Indigenous Australian Studies, at Edith Cowan University) design, develop and teach courses that are offered in a variety of delivery formats: on-campus, online and through traditional distance education. Many of our off-campus courses are now being delivered via the use of online learning technologies. For example, the individual units within the Indigenous University Orientation Course (IUOC) are currently being redesigned to incorporate these new learning and communication technologies. With the major components of these units being based on the internet, learning is also supported by contact with on-campus lecturers, print and multimedia …

Tuning Into Podcasts: Collaborative Research Into The Value Adding Nature Of Podcasts In Teacher Education, Maria T. Northcote, Linda Marshall, Eva Dobozy, Paul Swan, Paula Mildenhall

Maria Northcote

Digital pedagogy has become an increasingly viable, popular and effective component of higher education teaching and learning at Edith Cowan University and elsewhere. Components of digital pedagogy are diverse with new examples, such as podcasts, regularly being created, released for use and adopted in educational, recreational and business contexts. Consequently, university students use much of this technology both in their employment and recreational lives. This study explored processes of using and developing the students’ existing technological skills within their university studies. This paper documents the processes and findings of a collaborative research project that was implemented across six units of …