Current educational thinking promotes a student-centred approach to teaching as more engaging and... more Current educational thinking promotes a student-centred approach to teaching as more engaging and challenging for students, leading to improved learning outcomes. But what is ‘student-centred ’ learning, and how can it be achieved in a higher education setting with very large classes and content-rich courses? In a materials engineering course for 300 firstyear engineers, an online group project was introduced to add authenticity and collaborative activity into the course, and to improve student engagement. We explore the design, development and implementation of the project, and see if the intended outcomes were achieved.
Current educational thinking promotes a student-centred approach to teaching as more engaging and... more Current educational thinking promotes a student-centred approach to teaching as more engaging and challenging for students, leading to improved learning outcomes. But what is ‘student-centred’ learning, and how can it be achieved in a higher education setting with very large classes and content-rich courses? In a materials engineering course for 300 firstyear engineers, an online group project was introduced to add authenticity and collaborative activity into the course, and to improve student engagement. We explore the design, development and implementation of the project, and see if the intended outcomes were achieved.
The role of student peer review in teaching and learning in higher education has been discussed e... more The role of student peer review in teaching and learning in higher education has been discussed extensively in the literature (Topping, 1998; Carlson & Berry, 2003; de Raadt, Toleman, & Watson, 2005; Bernstein, Burnett, Goodburn & Savory 2006). It is seen to be particularly useful in online courses as a mechanism for providing students with the tools to conduct criteria-based critical reviews on the work of their peers (Mulder & Pearce, 2007; Cho & Schunna, 2007). This system can work well for both the online learner and instructor particularly when students are provided with specified assessment criteria, grade ranking system and set deadlines. However when factors relating to the management of such activities come into play, such as the misreading of requirements and criteria, the subjectivity of dealing with some material and the need for flexibility in the due dates, peer review as an assessment system can literally fall apart. This paper discusses these issues via two case stud...
Creativity, both as a professional capability and as a personal attribute, is acknowledged as an ... more Creativity, both as a professional capability and as a personal attribute, is acknowledged as an important dimension of education for a fast-changing world, relevant to future practice in the professions and for learners and teachers. New social media tools, which place creation, publication and critique in the hands of web users, have been recognised as having a role in democratising creativity, making the means of production and distribution accessible to most of the developed world. Using these tools to facilitate learning activities in higher education can promote creativity and many other related capabilities: digital literacy, independent learning, collaboration and communication skills, and critical thinking. It requires creativity on the part of teachers to develop and manage learning environments and tasks that are not traditional and may be quite experimental. This paper asks some university teachers who are innovating their teaching by using social media to reflect on how...
Learning & Teaching @ UNSWThe University of New South WalesAn online learning and teaching exchan... more Learning & Teaching @ UNSWThe University of New South WalesAn online learning and teaching exchange, integrating a range of communities of practicewith a showcase of good practice, and the tools to develop sound teaching approaches - itsounds a fine venture, but what should it encompass? How will it be framed andcontextualised? How will it be managed? And – most importantly – whom is it for, andhow will it engage users in a meaningful way, embedded into the context of their currentpractice? This is not an untrodden path, there are numerous examples of exchanges,repositories and communities developed on a grander scale than the one planned forUNSW, most recently the ALTC (formerly Carrick) Exchange, designed and developedunder the auspices of
Changing demands for graduate capabilities lead to changing directions for undergraduate assessme... more Changing demands for graduate capabilities lead to changing directions for undergraduate assessment. 'Creativity' is a widely promoted graduate capability that relates to many others, such as independent learning and innovative problem-solving. Assessment practices need to become more focused on the evaluation of generic capabilities, additional to assessment of disciplinespecific knowledge. This has implications for the content, design and modes of assessment. Assessment as learning promotes an approach in which the learning activity and assessment task are one and the same, and authentic assessment design incorporating group work, problem-based, online and portfolio assessment enable the development of generic capabilities to be embedded in the discipline. The paper explores creativity as a graduate capability, the creative potential of digital media, and how changing directions in assessment practice could support the assessment of creativity, with a focus on using eportf...
This work is part of a larger three year project aimed at disseminating good practice in online l... more This work is part of a larger three year project aimed at disseminating good practice in online learning and teaching throughout the Faculty of Science at The University of New South Wales (UNSW). Dissemination is based on a template Blackboard Vista site created for a large first year Materials Science course (Allen, Crosky, McAlpine, Hoffman and Monroe, 2006). A project group comprising members of several schools in the Science Faculty has been formed to manage the overall project and project funds have been used to employ an educational developer to work with academic teaching staff to modify and implement the template into courses from different schools across the faculty. The focus of the group is on large classes with a view to getting maximum impact (improved outcomes for the largest number of students). Fundamentals of Physics is one of the first courses to modify and implement the template as part of this project.
Online course templates based on specific learning designs were developed to support course enhan... more Online course templates based on specific learning designs were developed to support course enhancement at the University of New South Wales. Course designs are based on constructivist theory and activity theory with an emphasis on promoting active learning. Collaborative learning and problem-based learning models were used to design templates based on successful online and blended courses. A simplified template with a learning activity focus was used in staff training programs and as a basis for school templates. Templates were developed in Blackboard Vista, but could be applied in other learning management systems. This paper outlines development, implementation and evaluation of the templates and discusses the barriers and potentialities in dissemination of learning design templates.
The International Journal of Technology, Knowledge, and Society: Annual Review, 2012
... Arianne Rourke's research interests are in online teaching and learning, visual literacy... more ... Arianne Rourke's research interests are in online teaching and learning, visual literacy and the application of cognitive load theory to improve instructional design in higher education, specifically in the area of improving the teaching of undergraduate design history and ...
... Arianne Rourke's research interests are in online teaching and learning, visual literacy... more ... Arianne Rourke's research interests are in online teaching and learning, visual literacy and the application of cognitive load theory to improve instructional design in higher education, specifically in the area of improving the teaching of undergraduate design history and ...
Changing demands for graduate capabilities lead to changing directions for undergraduate assessme... more Changing demands for graduate capabilities lead to changing directions for undergraduate assessment.'Creativity'is a widely promoted graduate capability that relates to many others, such as independent learning and innovative problem-solving. Assessment practices ...
Creativity has emerged over the last decade as an important dimension of 21 Century professional ... more Creativity has emerged over the last decade as an important dimension of 21 Century professional practice (Florida, 2002), as a significant gap in the focus of school education (Robinson, 2000), and has been increasingly promoted as a graduate attribute in higher education (McWilliam & Dawson, 2008). The kinds of capabilities and behaviours that characterise creativity relate to other widely promoted graduate attributes such as independent learning, innovative problem-solving, interdisciplinarity and global citizenship. As creativity is increasingly understood as multi-faceted and contextualised, it may be usefully characterised as a 'threshold' concept or disposition (Meyer & Land, 2003). Examination of teaching creativity in 'creative' disciplines shows that creativity as an outcome is rarely explicit in curriculum documents, and that the teaching and assessment of creativity often relies upon the teacher's ability to model and guide creative practice through c...
Current educational thinking promotes a student-centred approach to teaching as more engaging and... more Current educational thinking promotes a student-centred approach to teaching as more engaging and challenging for students, leading to improved learning outcomes. But what is ‘student-centred ’ learning, and how can it be achieved in a higher education setting with very large classes and content-rich courses? In a materials engineering course for 300 firstyear engineers, an online group project was introduced to add authenticity and collaborative activity into the course, and to improve student engagement. We explore the design, development and implementation of the project, and see if the intended outcomes were achieved.
Current educational thinking promotes a student-centred approach to teaching as more engaging and... more Current educational thinking promotes a student-centred approach to teaching as more engaging and challenging for students, leading to improved learning outcomes. But what is ‘student-centred’ learning, and how can it be achieved in a higher education setting with very large classes and content-rich courses? In a materials engineering course for 300 firstyear engineers, an online group project was introduced to add authenticity and collaborative activity into the course, and to improve student engagement. We explore the design, development and implementation of the project, and see if the intended outcomes were achieved.
The role of student peer review in teaching and learning in higher education has been discussed e... more The role of student peer review in teaching and learning in higher education has been discussed extensively in the literature (Topping, 1998; Carlson & Berry, 2003; de Raadt, Toleman, & Watson, 2005; Bernstein, Burnett, Goodburn & Savory 2006). It is seen to be particularly useful in online courses as a mechanism for providing students with the tools to conduct criteria-based critical reviews on the work of their peers (Mulder & Pearce, 2007; Cho & Schunna, 2007). This system can work well for both the online learner and instructor particularly when students are provided with specified assessment criteria, grade ranking system and set deadlines. However when factors relating to the management of such activities come into play, such as the misreading of requirements and criteria, the subjectivity of dealing with some material and the need for flexibility in the due dates, peer review as an assessment system can literally fall apart. This paper discusses these issues via two case stud...
Creativity, both as a professional capability and as a personal attribute, is acknowledged as an ... more Creativity, both as a professional capability and as a personal attribute, is acknowledged as an important dimension of education for a fast-changing world, relevant to future practice in the professions and for learners and teachers. New social media tools, which place creation, publication and critique in the hands of web users, have been recognised as having a role in democratising creativity, making the means of production and distribution accessible to most of the developed world. Using these tools to facilitate learning activities in higher education can promote creativity and many other related capabilities: digital literacy, independent learning, collaboration and communication skills, and critical thinking. It requires creativity on the part of teachers to develop and manage learning environments and tasks that are not traditional and may be quite experimental. This paper asks some university teachers who are innovating their teaching by using social media to reflect on how...
Learning & Teaching @ UNSWThe University of New South WalesAn online learning and teaching exchan... more Learning & Teaching @ UNSWThe University of New South WalesAn online learning and teaching exchange, integrating a range of communities of practicewith a showcase of good practice, and the tools to develop sound teaching approaches - itsounds a fine venture, but what should it encompass? How will it be framed andcontextualised? How will it be managed? And – most importantly – whom is it for, andhow will it engage users in a meaningful way, embedded into the context of their currentpractice? This is not an untrodden path, there are numerous examples of exchanges,repositories and communities developed on a grander scale than the one planned forUNSW, most recently the ALTC (formerly Carrick) Exchange, designed and developedunder the auspices of
Changing demands for graduate capabilities lead to changing directions for undergraduate assessme... more Changing demands for graduate capabilities lead to changing directions for undergraduate assessment. 'Creativity' is a widely promoted graduate capability that relates to many others, such as independent learning and innovative problem-solving. Assessment practices need to become more focused on the evaluation of generic capabilities, additional to assessment of disciplinespecific knowledge. This has implications for the content, design and modes of assessment. Assessment as learning promotes an approach in which the learning activity and assessment task are one and the same, and authentic assessment design incorporating group work, problem-based, online and portfolio assessment enable the development of generic capabilities to be embedded in the discipline. The paper explores creativity as a graduate capability, the creative potential of digital media, and how changing directions in assessment practice could support the assessment of creativity, with a focus on using eportf...
This work is part of a larger three year project aimed at disseminating good practice in online l... more This work is part of a larger three year project aimed at disseminating good practice in online learning and teaching throughout the Faculty of Science at The University of New South Wales (UNSW). Dissemination is based on a template Blackboard Vista site created for a large first year Materials Science course (Allen, Crosky, McAlpine, Hoffman and Monroe, 2006). A project group comprising members of several schools in the Science Faculty has been formed to manage the overall project and project funds have been used to employ an educational developer to work with academic teaching staff to modify and implement the template into courses from different schools across the faculty. The focus of the group is on large classes with a view to getting maximum impact (improved outcomes for the largest number of students). Fundamentals of Physics is one of the first courses to modify and implement the template as part of this project.
Online course templates based on specific learning designs were developed to support course enhan... more Online course templates based on specific learning designs were developed to support course enhancement at the University of New South Wales. Course designs are based on constructivist theory and activity theory with an emphasis on promoting active learning. Collaborative learning and problem-based learning models were used to design templates based on successful online and blended courses. A simplified template with a learning activity focus was used in staff training programs and as a basis for school templates. Templates were developed in Blackboard Vista, but could be applied in other learning management systems. This paper outlines development, implementation and evaluation of the templates and discusses the barriers and potentialities in dissemination of learning design templates.
The International Journal of Technology, Knowledge, and Society: Annual Review, 2012
... Arianne Rourke's research interests are in online teaching and learning, visual literacy... more ... Arianne Rourke's research interests are in online teaching and learning, visual literacy and the application of cognitive load theory to improve instructional design in higher education, specifically in the area of improving the teaching of undergraduate design history and ...
... Arianne Rourke's research interests are in online teaching and learning, visual literacy... more ... Arianne Rourke's research interests are in online teaching and learning, visual literacy and the application of cognitive load theory to improve instructional design in higher education, specifically in the area of improving the teaching of undergraduate design history and ...
Changing demands for graduate capabilities lead to changing directions for undergraduate assessme... more Changing demands for graduate capabilities lead to changing directions for undergraduate assessment.'Creativity'is a widely promoted graduate capability that relates to many others, such as independent learning and innovative problem-solving. Assessment practices ...
Creativity has emerged over the last decade as an important dimension of 21 Century professional ... more Creativity has emerged over the last decade as an important dimension of 21 Century professional practice (Florida, 2002), as a significant gap in the focus of school education (Robinson, 2000), and has been increasingly promoted as a graduate attribute in higher education (McWilliam & Dawson, 2008). The kinds of capabilities and behaviours that characterise creativity relate to other widely promoted graduate attributes such as independent learning, innovative problem-solving, interdisciplinarity and global citizenship. As creativity is increasingly understood as multi-faceted and contextualised, it may be usefully characterised as a 'threshold' concept or disposition (Meyer & Land, 2003). Examination of teaching creativity in 'creative' disciplines shows that creativity as an outcome is rarely explicit in curriculum documents, and that the teaching and assessment of creativity often relies upon the teacher's ability to model and guide creative practice through c...
Uploads