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Articles 1 - 18 of 18
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Use Of Quality Teaching And Learning Circles In Engineering, Alisa Percy, Wilma Vialle, Fazel Naghdy, Denis Montgomery, Gerry Turcotte
Use Of Quality Teaching And Learning Circles In Engineering, Alisa Percy, Wilma Vialle, Fazel Naghdy, Denis Montgomery, Gerry Turcotte
Alisa Percy, PhD
The commercialisation of higher education, an increasingly diverse student population, the emphasis on educational technology and flexible delivery, the need to be internationally competitive and the increased regulation on quality standards, just to name a few factors, has seen a rapid transformation of the university system and the demands placed on the staff therein. Assisting staff to cope with such changes and providing them with the necessary skills to effectively contribute to the needs or goals of the institution requires sophisticated methods of professional development. This paper introduces one such method that is being implemented at the University of Wollongong. …
The Casualisation Of Teaching And The Subject At Risk, Alisa Percy, Rosemary Beaumont
The Casualisation Of Teaching And The Subject At Risk, Alisa Percy, Rosemary Beaumont
Alisa Percy, PhD
The casualisation of teaching in Australian higher education has come to be problematised as a risk to the quality of teaching and learning. However, the potential and location of risk, and therefore what constitutes an appropriate institutional intervention, requires interrogation as universities comply with the various regulations that, on the one hand, legitimise further casualisation in the name of flexibility, and on the other, insist on institutional responsibilities in the performance of quality. Taking a critical approach to risk consciousness, this paper examines the way casualisation is produced through workplace reform and problematised as a danger to the student learning …
How Do We Know If Students Learn Online? A Case Study Of The Deep Integration Of Tertiary Literacy And Discipline-Specific Skills Into A Flexibly Delivered First Year Subject, Margaret Merten, Alisa Percy, Jan Skillen, Neil Trivett
How Do We Know If Students Learn Online? A Case Study Of The Deep Integration Of Tertiary Literacy And Discipline-Specific Skills Into A Flexibly Delivered First Year Subject, Margaret Merten, Alisa Percy, Jan Skillen, Neil Trivett
Alisa Percy, PhD
As universities globally move toward the flexible delivery of subjects and courses, the issue of how students learn from these modes is increasingly important for the design of these subjects. Using an action learning approach, this paper will show that this integration of learning skills into subject curriculum results in significant improvements in students’ skills levels. The main focus of the paper is to show that the conversion of subjects into flexible delivery allows a deeper level of integration of tertiary literacy instruction than is possible in campus based subjects. To explore this, the paper will present a case-study on …
Mapping The Tertiary Literacy Skills Of The Bachelor Of Commerce: A Step Towards Inter-Disciplinary Dialogue And Cohesive Skills Development In A Degree Program, Alisa Percy, Janet Moore, Anne Mitchell
Mapping The Tertiary Literacy Skills Of The Bachelor Of Commerce: A Step Towards Inter-Disciplinary Dialogue And Cohesive Skills Development In A Degree Program, Alisa Percy, Janet Moore, Anne Mitchell
Alisa Percy, PhD
This paper outlines a two-staged inter-disciplinary project in the Faculty of Commerce designed to identify, review and integrate the teaching of tertiary literacy skills within the undergraduate degree programs. The paper provides an overview of the process that involves three strategic learning partnerships: the partnership between the Faculty of Commerce and Learning Development; the partnership between Commerce academics and Learning Development staff; and inter-disciplinary partnerships within the faculty. The paper emphasises the importance of inter and intra-disciplinary dialogue and a whole degree approach as a means for ensuring articulated skills instruction across a degree program and improvements in teaching and …
The Ideall Approach To Learning Development: A Model For Fostering Improved Literacy And Learning Outcomes For Students, Jan Skillen, Margaret Merten, Neil Trivett, Alisa Percy
The Ideall Approach To Learning Development: A Model For Fostering Improved Literacy And Learning Outcomes For Students, Jan Skillen, Margaret Merten, Neil Trivett, Alisa Percy
Alisa Percy, PhD
An increasingly accepted viewpoint in tertiary education today is that the diverse student population entering university at first year level requires support with the transition process from previous education contexts to that of tertiary education. While Learning Centres were initially developed to assist that transition, the support they offered was limited: it was remedial in the sense of 'fixing-up' the students who were diagnosed (either by themselves or their lecturers) as needing 'help'; it was inequitable, assisting only a very small proportion of the students population; and it was generic in that the learning support was offered outside of the …
Building Online Essay Writing Support Tools, Cath Ellis, Alisa Percy
Building Online Essay Writing Support Tools, Cath Ellis, Alisa Percy
Alisa Percy, PhD
The English Studies Program at the University of Wollongong, with support from staff in the library and Learning Development, has linked together a series of learning support tools for use in their 100-level subjects. These tools — an online research and citation skills assessment task and an essay and quiz writing study guide — harness the world wide web as a means of augmenting and enhancing student learning at an undergraduate level. Each of these tools is flexibly delivered, student centred and curriculum integrated. This project is part of a broader initiative in the English Studies Program to develop an …
Creating Partnerships In Suporting Student Learning: A Paradigm Shift In Student Learning Support, Jan Skillen, Alisa Percy, Neil Trivett, Bronwyn James
Creating Partnerships In Suporting Student Learning: A Paradigm Shift In Student Learning Support, Jan Skillen, Alisa Percy, Neil Trivett, Bronwyn James
Alisa Percy, PhD
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 …
Learning Advising Practice And Reform: A Perspective From The University Of Wollongong, Australia, Alisa Percy, Bronwyn James, Jeannette Stirling, Ruth Walker
Learning Advising Practice And Reform: A Perspective From The University Of Wollongong, Australia, Alisa Percy, Bronwyn James, Jeannette Stirling, Ruth Walker
Alisa Percy, PhD
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.
Tutors' Forum: Engaging Distributed Communities Of Practice, Rosemary Beaumont, Jeannette Stirling, Alisa Percy
Tutors' Forum: Engaging Distributed Communities Of Practice, Rosemary Beaumont, Jeannette Stirling, Alisa Percy
Alisa Percy, PhD
The need to engage students studying at a distance in order to reduce isolation, foster a sense of belonging, and enhance learning has received significant attention over the past few years. Conversely, very little research has focused on teachers working in this type of environment. In fact, we argue, they appear to be the forgotten dimension in „communities‟ of distance learning. In this paper we identify some of the problems generated by teaching university subjects simultaneously across a network of campuses: a practice known as multi-location teaching. We examine strategies for engaging multi-location teachers as key contributors to a quality …
The Red Resource, Recognition - Enhancement - Development: The Contribution Of Sessional Teachers To Higher Education (Complete Report), Alisa Percy, Michele Scoufis, Sharron Parry, Allan Goody, Margaret Hicks, Ian Macdonald, Kay Martinez, Nick Szorenyi-Reischl, Yoni Ryan, Sandra Wills, Lynn Sheridan
The Red Resource, Recognition - Enhancement - Development: The Contribution Of Sessional Teachers To Higher Education (Complete Report), Alisa Percy, Michele Scoufis, Sharron Parry, Allan Goody, Margaret Hicks, Ian Macdonald, Kay Martinez, Nick Szorenyi-Reischl, Yoni Ryan, Sandra Wills, Lynn Sheridan
Alisa Percy, PhD
This large-scale study into the recognition, enhancement and development of sessional teaching in higher education builds on the Australian Universities Teaching Committee Report (2003a) Training, Support and Management of Sessional Teaching Staff. The aim of the current Project was to identify and analyse current national practice and refocus attention on the issues surrounding sessional teachers in the university sector. The Project had three objectives: to establish the full extent of the contribution that sessional teachers make to teaching and learning in higher education; to identify and analyse good practice examples for dissemination; and to consider the possible developments for institutional …
The Red Report, Recognition - Enhancement - Development: The Contribution Of Sessional Teachers To Higher Education, Alisa Percy, Michele Scoufis, Sharron Parry, Allan Goody, Margaret Hicks, Ian Macdonald, Kay Martinez, Nick Szorenyi-Reischl, Yoni Ryan, Sandra Wills, Lynn Sheridan
The Red Report, Recognition - Enhancement - Development: The Contribution Of Sessional Teachers To Higher Education, Alisa Percy, Michele Scoufis, Sharron Parry, Allan Goody, Margaret Hicks, Ian Macdonald, Kay Martinez, Nick Szorenyi-Reischl, Yoni Ryan, Sandra Wills, Lynn Sheridan
Alisa Percy, PhD
This large-scale study into the recognition, enhancement and development of sessional teaching in higher education builds on the Australian Universities Teaching Committee Report (2003a) Training, Support and Management of Sessional Teaching Staff. The aim of the current Project was to identify and analyse current national practice and refocus attention on the issues surrounding sessional teachers in the university sector. The Project had three objectives: to establish the extent of the contribution that sessional teachers make to higher education; to identify and analyse good practice examples for dissemination; and to consider the possible developments for institutional and sector-wide improvements to the …
Coming Of Age: Developing A Genealogy Of Knowledge In The Las Field, Alisa Percy, Jeannette Stirling
Coming Of Age: Developing A Genealogy Of Knowledge In The Las Field, Alisa Percy, Jeannette Stirling
Alisa Percy, PhD
Quality teaching and learning in higher education has become a mantra in the rhetoric of university policies, and, increasingly, assuring successful student learning is seen asthe core business of the modern university. Ironically, this comes at a time when academic staff are faced with unprecedented demands on their teaching repertoire while being expected to function with fewer resources. Not surprisingly then, many LAS staff find themselves, their knowledge and their skills central to ensuring the university's aspirations, yet in many ways still under threat of intellectual erasure. A contributing factor to this threat, it is argued, is the lack of …
Exploring Student Engagement For Generation Y : A Pilot In Environmental Economics, Ann Hodgkinson, Alisa Percy
Exploring Student Engagement For Generation Y : A Pilot In Environmental Economics, Ann Hodgkinson, Alisa Percy
Alisa Percy, PhD
This paper reports on a pilot study involving the redesign of a third year Economics subject according to principles of engagement as they relate to the discursive Generation Y subject. The study involved a review of the literature, redesign of the subject to a blended learning format and evaluation of the design.
Representation For (Re)Invention, Alisa Percy, Jeannette Stirling
Representation For (Re)Invention, Alisa Percy, Jeannette Stirling
Alisa Percy, PhD
In her plenary address to the 2001 Australian Language and Academic Skills Conference, Carolyn Webb (2002, p. 7) suggested that in comparison to other educational developers in the university context, Language and Academic Skills (LAS) practitioners had been less strategic in addressing their identity and practice ‘to secure their place in the landscape of university work, [and] to reinvent themselves for securing future places’. She concluded with the suggestion that LAS practitioners might wish to see themselves as ‘facilitators of organisational learning’ (Webb, 2002, p. 17). Both of these points will be addressed in the following discussion. This paper argues …
A Systemic Approach To Working With Academic Staff: Addressing The Confusion At The Source, Alisa Percy, Jan Skillen
A Systemic Approach To Working With Academic Staff: Addressing The Confusion At The Source, Alisa Percy, Jan Skillen
Alisa Percy, PhD
The role of the learning adviser in the tertiary context could be argued to be in a period of transformation with the changing culture of modern universities. While in many respects we are still attempting to develop an appropriate and comprehensive definition of our role at the national level, the approach we take is often dependent on our university’s organisation, philosophy and policy. In response to a number of educational and economic factors, in some universities the role of the learning adviser is moving from one that operates in the remedial mode focusing solely on student skills development, to one …
Truth Games/Truth Claims : Resisting Institutional Notions Of Las As Remediation, Jeannette Stirling, Alisa Percy
Truth Games/Truth Claims : Resisting Institutional Notions Of Las As Remediation, Jeannette Stirling, Alisa Percy
Alisa Percy, PhD
Michel Foucault argues that the technologies of identity – whether professional or institutional – rely on what he calls ‘games of truth’. He argues that these truth games comprise ‘an ensemble of rules for the production of truth . . . which can be considered in function of its principles and its rules of procedure as valid or not’ (cited in Gauthier, 1988, p. 15). Moreover, we can only become subjects by ‘subjecting’ ourselves to selected truth games because there is neither selfhood nor truth outside of these games. For Foucault, the subject’s power in this process is to decide …
Using Evidence And Avoiding Plagiarism E-Learning Module: Scaffolding Academic Integrity, Alisa Percy, Venkata Yanamandram, Sandra Humphrey
Using Evidence And Avoiding Plagiarism E-Learning Module: Scaffolding Academic Integrity, Alisa Percy, Venkata Yanamandram, Sandra Humphrey
Alisa Percy, PhD
This paper describes the collaborative design, implementation and evaluation of a discipline-based eLearning module (eLM). The eLM was piloted as a mandatory but ungraded assessment task in five subjects across all years of study in the Management and Marketing specialisations, four in the Bachelor of Commerce, and one in the Master of Commerce, at the University of Wollongong. The eLM was developed in the subject’s eLearning space within the learning management system, Blackboard Vista and included a streamed lecture which provides a range of instruction and examples of how to use evidence, a link to the University’s Harvard Referencing Guidelines …
From Integration To Transformation, J. Skillen, B. James, Alisa Percy, H. Tootell, H. J. Irvine
From Integration To Transformation, J. Skillen, B. James, Alisa Percy, H. Tootell, H. J. Irvine
Alisa Percy, PhD
The integration of instruction about academic skills into subject curricula has become widely recognised as an effective means of teaching students about discipline-specific academic skills; however, integration can achieve much more than this. It can involve the learning developers and discipline teaching team in collaborations that lead to such things as a rethinking of assessment types and assignment tasks, staging of assignment tasks, revision of assignment questions, redevelopment of marking criteria, provision of marking workshops for the teaching team, the development of staff marking handbooks and more specific instruction focussed on learning strategies. When integration involves this amount of redevelopment, …