Student evaluations and the impact on curriculum, teaching and assessment

This presentation discusses some of the major pressures on universities to frame curriculum around employability skills and professional requirements. Recent evaluation of Australian university courses by graduates suggests that many institutions remain perplexed as to how to do this. The presentation suggests that the student evaluations do not necessarily indicate poor curriculum development but possibly a lack of making skill development more overt through teaching and assessment. The main objective of this presentation is to outline and describe a project on how curriculum needs to and can respond to professional needs and what this may entail for the way in which traditional professional courses are taught and assessed. The presentation seeks to involve participants in identifying and discussing options for the teaching and assessment of skills and possible options for how these skills can be progressively developed throughout a course of study.

Focusing on university student engagement at the institutional level

In Australia, there has been a tendency to rely on quantitative indicators of university teaching quality. This has occurred partly because the indicators are perceived as objective and reliable and partly because they are relatively simple to gather and collate. A national project currently underway is based on the assumptions that teaching quality is multidimensional and that the identification and use of relevant indicators of teaching quality are dependent on the institutional environment. With a focus on student engagement, this paper outlines the research-based approach to developing indicators of teaching quality being taken by one Australian university participating in the national project.

Designing and managing a research project : a business student's guide

This book presents a step-by-step guide for undertaking research projects that is multidisciplinary in focus and student-friendly in style. It could be used as either a core text or a supplementary text for courses in management (including industrial psychology), and marketing. Graduate students in related fields such as health care administration, public administration, and nursing administration would also find this text useful.

Determinants of student readiness for flexible learning : Some preliminary findings

An exploratory study using a questionnaire and focus group interviews was conducted amongst a small sample of first-year, first-semester, undergraduate design students from the Faculty of Art and Design at Monash University, Australia, to determine their readiness for off-campus, flexible, independent learning. The study explores common problems, similarities and differences among learners from South East Asia, other international students, and local Australian students. Findings of the study are presented under five key themes: dependence on the teacher and the classroom environment; flexible learning and working alone; structure; communication; and work patterns. The article details approaches to study of first-year undergraduates taking a creative unit such as design and concludes by discussing the possible cultural attributes that have an impact on the learning as well as related concerns and problems.

Computer-mediated education : the relationship between computer access, tutorial attendance and student grades

One of the problems faced by Australian academics in the 21st century is to facilitate learning with a changing profile of students, in bigger and bigger classes. As educators at tertiary institutions, our environment is undergoing major changes as increasingly business and commerce programs are offering courses either partially (Web enabled) or totally (Web exclusive) online. This study has developed an important model allowing the prediction of students' overall results and indicates that a student's final grade is dependant, in part, on accessing the study materials and study tools available to them via WebCT and attending face-to-face tutorials.

Library learning space design : a good student fit

We are seeing a renewed interest nationally and internationally in the design and development of new learning environments. There is, at Deakin and more generally in the higher education sector, recognition that the students' experience of a flexible and supportive educational environment is central to excellent teaching and fosters student success. Recent Carrick Institute (now the Australian Learning and Teaching Council) grants have supported the need for a greater understanding of good practice, with workshops being held around the country.

The student experience is integral to planning the re-purposing of Library spaces at Deakin's two larger campuses, Waurn Ponds and Burwood. The physical spaces within the Library will be flexible and provide support for individual learning and study, group learning and discussion, with ubiquitous ICT access and assistance services readily accessible. The improvement to the amenities, including contemporary, wired casual spaces, will encourage students to come on to campus and stay, strengthening opportunities to build a learning community. This learning community can extend through opportunities for social networking to students studying online and off-campus.

Library services and spaces will align with the new pedagogical needs of the university, providing holistic support for students' flexible learning experiences.
"We know that space can have a significant impact on teaching and learning . . . What we know about how people learn has changed our ideas about learning space. There is value from bumping into someone and having a casual conversation. There is value from hands on, active learning as well as from discussion and reflection. There is value in being able to receive immediate support when needed and from being able to integrate multiple activities [and multiple information sources] to complete a project." (Diane Oblinger, Learning Spaces, EDUCAUSE, 2006).

Student engagement online : an agenda for research (showcase)

This showcase will describe an institutional research project aimed at investigating students' online engagement and its measurement.

Does the discussion help? The impact of a formally assessed online discussion on final student results

While there is agreement that participation in online asynchronous discussions can enhance student learning, it has also been identified that there is a need to investigate the impact of participation in online discussions on student course performance. This paper presents a case study based on an undergraduate engineering management unit employing a formally assessed online discussion area. It was observed that while many students read a significant number of discussion postings, generally, the posting of new and reply messages occurred at the minimum level required to qualify for the assignment marks. Based on correlation and multiple regression analysis, it was observed that two variables were significantly related to a student's final unit mark—prior academic ability and the number of new postings made to the online discussion. Each new posting contributed three times as much to the final unit mark as its nominal assessment value, suggesting that the work in preparing their new discussion postings assisted students in the completion of a range of assessable tasks for the unit. The number of postings read was not significantly correlated with the final unit mark, suggesting that passive lurking in this online discussion did not significantly contribute to student learning outcomes.

What is the on-campus experience? Engineering student study and work

Accreditation for off-campus engineering programmes has proven to be problematic. In Australia, off-campus programmes are compelled to contain mandatory residential sessions so that offcampus students can have an `on-campus experience'. This paper explores the nature of modern oncampus undergraduate engineering study, and finds that it now typically involves at least part-time employment and has more in common with off-campus study than the on-campus experience enjoyed by most of the current institutional (education and professional) administrators when they completed their undergraduate studies. Rather than ignore student term-time work, engineering programmes should use it to enhance the development of desirable graduate attributes.