Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Performance Measures, Benchmarking And Value, Felicity Mcgregor

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

[Extract] The announcement of the establishment of a Quality Audit Agency to evaluate the performance of universities, signalled an inevitable expansion of the incipient culture of measurement and evaluation in Australian universities. Those who consider that quality, and its associated tenets of measurement and evaluation are of dubious value, will be constrained to demonstrate goal achievement through whichever mechanisms are deemed appropriate by the Agency. Otherwise, they may face an uncertain funding future. Although the details of the audit process are not yet clear, there will be a single national body which will be responsible for overseeing independent external quality …

Improving Teaching And Learning Through Formative Evaluation: Using A Customised Online Tool To Collect Student Feedback, Robert M. Corderoy, Ray Stace, Sandra Wills, A. Ip

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

Good teachers spend time reflecting on their teaching practice. What is working, what isn't - and more importantly, why is or isn’t it? Such reflection is an essential component of maintaining and improving both teaching practice and the learning outcomes for students. Changes in current teaching practice towards more flexible teaching and learning environments and especially towards more student-centred online environments make this an even more important process. To answer this kind of question requires data which reflect the student's viewpoint on the teaching process and the time to collect and analyse it. As the subject itself is more and …

Investors In People, Felicity Mcgregor

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

The University of Wollongong Library is the first library in Australia to be awarded the Investors in People (IiP) standard. IiP is an internationally recognised standard concerned with achieving best practice in the management and development of people to achieve organisational goals, together with a framework for ongoing evaluation and improvement. The standard originated in the United Kingdom and is administered in Australia by NCSI (NATA Certification Services International). The award was presented by the chief executive officer of NCSI, Sue Chapman at a ceremony on 25 February 2000, attended by the University's vice-chancellor, Professor Gerard Sutton, the pro vice-chancellor …

Managing Technological Change And University Teaching, Sandra Wills, S. Alexander

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

Current economic and political climates, together with the need to provide more flexible learning opportunities for students, has resulted in unprecedented pressure on education to use information and communications technologies (CIT) as a way of coping with these pressures, without decreasing the quality of offerings.

This chapter reviews the introduction of technology in teaching and learning in higher education from the theoretical perspective of the MIT90s framework developed in Yetton et al (1997), drawing upon case studies of the introduction of technology in teaching and learning in two institutions, and a study of the outcomes of a national initiative to …

History And Heritage: Change And Adaptation, Michael K. Organ

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

Nestled at the base of the Illawarra Escarpment, in the shadow of Mount Keira and Bert Flugelman's winged monument to flight, the University of Wollongong central campus is constantly reminded of the power of nature and the unique sense of place which exists in this most picturesque part of Australia. Located at a geographical point of convergence between the mountains and the sea, nature is everywhere and obvious, despite the ever encroaching evidence of man and machine. As a seat of learning and focus for research and the implementation of new technologies in the 21st century, the University of Wollongong …

Investing In People To Develop The Ideal Culture, Margie H. Jantti

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

While technical skills and professional qualifications will continue to play an important role in the identification and selection of people to join our organisations, the development of life-long learning skills will be the corner-stone of an organisation’s ongoing success and capacity to develop and adapt in a constantly shifting market place. Change is the only constant is the catch phrase of the moment. In a climate of ever-accelerating, and often overwhelming change, the ability of individuals to develop suites of skills and knowledge that promote flexibility, innovation and creativity will be a key determinant of an organisation’s future success or …

A Systemic Approach To Working With Academic Staff: Addressing The Confusion At The Source, Alisa Percy, Jan Skillen

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

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 …

Building Online Essay Writing Support Tools, Cath Ellis, Alisa Percy

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

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 …

Complementary Pedagogical Strategies For Online Design, Sandra Wills, Albert Ip, Adair Bunnett

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

The First Fleet Convict Database has had a 20 year journey as an exemplar of educational software, published first on mainframe, then microcomputer, and now the web. We describe how the nature of the web environment has changed the nature of this educational package. Pedagogically, databases of primary source data provide students with a learning experience based on the inquiry learning model however, observations of students and teachers in the past 20 years have indicated that database searching is shallow and investigation perfunctory. Before, we could have blamed unwieldy search engines. Now that this obstacle appears to have been removed, …

Flexible Learning At The Crossroads: Are Our Teachers Ready?, Sandra Wills

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

This paper reflects on managing technological change in teaching and learning, with particular emphasis on staff development. It draws on two national reports in Australia. One report team interviewed senior management in 50% of Australian universities (Wills and Yetton, 1997). The other reviewed 104 nationally funded IT based teaching projects (Alexander et al, 1998). Both make recommendations that have implications for staff development. A number of staff development case studies are described, most practising what they preach by adopting flexible learning techniques in order to teach teachers by example about flexible learning: Project LEAD, Teaching at a Distance, Flexible Delivery …

Subject Online Survey (Sos): An Online Tool To Support Improvement In Teaching And Learning, Robert M. Corderoy, Raymond J. Stace, Sandra Wills, Albert Ip

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

Traditionally, data relating to the conduct of subjects at the University of Wollongong has been collected for teachers with one main purpose in mind: to provide the teacher with supporting information as to their teaching ability for the purposes of promotion. SOS is a web based system which teachers can use to author customised surveys to collect information about the subject they teach. These surveys are completed anonymously by the students via the web (using randomly generated, survey specific numeric tokens) and the data is automatically collated and returned to the teacher. The teacher may also produce the surveys in …

Academic Standards Versus Disability Rights, Richard Gosden, Gregory R. Hampton

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

A simmering controversy has been running in the United states since 1995 over the perceived conflict between the maintenance of academic standards and the rights of disabled university students. Recent developments are set to raise the same issue in Australian universities. The first of these developments is the shift in the emphasis of academic standards with the implementation of the Generic Skills Assessment (GSA) program. The second is the release of draft disability standards for education to streamline enforcement of the Commonwealth's Disability Discrimination Act (DDA). The DDA protects disabled people against discrimination in education. Amongst the many types of …

Telling Stories: Text Analysis In A Museum, Emily Rose Purser

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

Museum texts tell interesting stories, and their role in public education makes them quite important. The exhibition discussed in this paper gives a message that interests, but also concerns me, as a teacher of language, communication and cultural studies. It is a case of one culture telling stories about another, and in such a delicate arena there is much potential to cause offence. The exhibition in question is about peoples of the Pacific, and is in a major European museum of the world's indigenous cultures (BerlinDahlem). I had visited it to see how Australian cultures are represented in image and …