Designing contemporary e-supported professional development environments to enhance tertiary teaching and learning

National and organsational imperatives in Australian higher education are demanding systematic and cost-effective approaches to the professional development of staff in their teaching in order to enhance the quality of student learning. Many universities are geographically distributed, multi- campus, multi-city and multi-modal in nature, and highly dependent for their effective operation on information and communications technologies (ICT). Deakin University is one such university operating in Australian higher education. Consistent with the progressive principles and practices of the learning organisation, new approaches and environments are required to support the professional development of staff for enhanced teaching and learning in higher education. These environments now require substantial use of e-learning for both learning about teaching online and the development of teaching capacities in the world of the modern-day, technologically-supported physical classroom. This article outlines the imperatives to establish and operate cost-effective e-supported environments for professional development for excellence in teaching and learning. The key principles underlying these emergent environments are outlined, along with the major tools, resources and features of such environments. A contemporary online teaching case site is highlighted as indicative of new approaches to supporting professional development of staff for excellence in online teaching and learning.

Case studies in human rights education and critical educational science

This thesis offers an account of the history and effects of three curriculum projects sponsored by the Australian Human Rights Commission between 1983 and 1986. Each project attempted to improve observance of human rights in and through Australian schools through participatory research (or critical educational science). That is, the research included, as a conscious feature, the effort to develop new forms of curriculum work which more adequately respect the personal and professional rights of teachers, especially their entitlement as persons and professionals to participate in planning, conducting and controlling the curriculum development, evaluation and implementation that constitutes their work. In more specific terms, the Australian Human Rights Commission's three curriculum projects represented an attempt to improve the practice and theory of human rights education by engaging teachers in the practical work of evaluating, researching, and developing a human rights curriculum. While the account of the Australian Human Rights Commission curriculum project is substantially an account of teachers1 work, it is a story which ranges well beyond the boundaries of schools and classrooms. It encompasses a history of episodes and events which illustrate how educational initiatives and their fate will often have to set within the broad framework of political, social, and cultural contestation if they are to be understood. More exactly, although the Human Rights Commission's work with schools was instrumental in showing how teachers might contribute to the challenging task of improving human rights education, the project was brought to a premature halt during the debate in the Australian Senate on the Bill of Rights in late 1985 and early 1986. At this point in time, the Government was confronted with such opposition from the Liberal/National Party Coalition that it was obliged to withdraw its Bill of Rights Legislation, close down the original Human Rights Commission, and abandon the attempt to develop a nationwide program in human rights education. The research presents an explanation of why it has been difficult for the Australian Government to live up to its international obligations to improve respect for human rights through education. More positively, however, it shows how human rights education, human rights related areas of education, and social education might be transformed if teachers (and other members of schools communities) were given opportunities to contribute to that task. Such opportunities, moreover, also represent what might be called the practice of democracy in everyday life. They thus exemplify, as well as prefigure, what it might mean to live in a more authentically democratic society.

Engaging students in authentic science through school - community links : learning from the rural experience

There is an increase in school-community linked initiatives in school science. A substantial proportion of these involve rural schools. This article asks the question: In what ways do these initiatives offer possibilities for better engaging rural students with school science? The paper draws on information from a number of school-community linked science initiatives in rural areas, including exemplars from the recent Australian School Innovation in Science, Technology and Mathematics (ASISTM) project, which were obtained primarily through interviews with participants. The initiatives are analysed in terms of an 'innovation framework', concerning the ideas and purposes underlying them, the knowledge and pedagogies used, and the experiences of the participants in the initiative. The paper concludes that these initiatives differ in significant respects from traditional school science, and offer the possibility of productive future directions. The authors discuss the challenges and policy directions that need to be pursued to represent these practices in mainstream curricula.

Laptop computers as a mediating tool between teacher beliefs and pedagogy

This study focused on teachers of senior secondary classes and the impact on pedagogy of the use of laptop computers. It was found that in schools operating a mature laptop program, pedagogy was influenced by teacher beliefs, prevailing school culture, and the assessment requirements of students in their final year.

Competing in the clouds: a strategic challenge for ITSP Ltd

By 2010, cloud computing had become established as a new model of IT provisioning for service providers. New market players and businesses emerged, threatening the business models of established market players. This teaching case explores the challenges arising through the impact of the new cloud computing technology on an established, multinational IT service provider called ITSP. Should the incumbent vendors adopt cloud computing offerings? And, if so, what form should those offerings take? The teaching case focuses on the strategic dimensions of technological developments, their threats and opportunities. It requires strategic decision making and forecasting under high uncertainty. The critical question is whether cloud computing is a disruptive technology or simply an alternative channel to supply computing resources over the Internet. The case challenges students to assess this new technology and plan ITSP’s responses.

Easy, cheap and true : the case for promoting the Curwen method of teaching choral singing in developing countries

The Curwen method (Tonic Sol-fa) was developed by the Rev. John Cunven in England from the 1840s originally as a means of teaching music reading from staff notation. However, in the 1872 Standard Course, staff notation was dispensed with altogether in favour of Tonic Sol-fa "letter" notation. By the end of the century, Tonic Sol-fa had spread from Britain to many overseas countries. Although aspects were later incorporated into staff-based teaching
systems such as the Kodaly approach and the "New Curwen Method", Tonic Sol-fa in its late nineteenth century ' form has been "extinct" in Britain for several decades. Nevertheless, it is "alive and well", indeed flourishing, in certain African, Asian and Pacific countries. This paper analyses the Tonic Sol-fa system in terms of contemporary pedagogical practice and notational theory. The paper also reports on the use of Tonic Sol-fa in two countries - South Africa and Fiji - where it is now the mainstay of community choral music. It is argued that, particularly for developing countries, the Curwen method and its letter notation should be seriously considered as an alternative to staff notation methods as a highly effective means of promoting school and community choral singing.

Adopting web-based learning and teaching: a case study in higher education

Most universities worldwide are becoming distance education providers through adopting web-based learning and teaching via the introduction of learning management systems that enable them to open their courses to both on- and off-campus students. Whether this is an effective introduction depends on factors that enable and impede the adoption of such systems and their related pedagogical strategies. This study examines such factors related to adopting a learning management system in a large multicampus urban Australian university. The research method used case study approaches and purposively selected the sample consisting of innovative teaching academics from across the university, who used web-based approaches to teach both on- and off-campus learners. The data were analyzed using a combination of Rogers' theory of diffusion of innovations and actor-network theory and revealed a series of enabling and impeding factors faced by pioneering technology-adopter teaching academics, some of which are technology related while others are policy related and common to large multicampus institutions. The study found that safe adoption environments recognizing career priorities of academics are a result of the continuous negotiation between the evolving institution and its innovative and creative staff. The article concludes with a series of conditions that would form a safe, enabling, and encouraging environment for technology-adopter teaching academics in a large multicampus higher education setting.

A case for blended and collaborative learning as strategies for teaching editing and publishing within a postgraduate writing program

Several recent studies have called for the breakdown of' arbitrary distinctions between virtual and "face-to-face" classrooms' (Comeaux & McKenna-Byington 2003: 348; see also McDonald 2002; Rosset, Douglis & Frazee 2003; Morse 2003). In 2004 the Professional and Creative Writing discipline at Deakin University added Editing and Publishing (which had previously been available as on-campus-only units at our institution) to an established list of online postgraduate writing units taught via the auspices of the new (to our university) WebCT technology. This paper describes and evaluates our experience of challenging the 'arbitrary distinctions' between our two cohorts of students by incorporating blended and collaborative learning strategies into our course via two specific projects.

Conceptions of teaching with integrity online in higher education: a case in the field of engineering

The viewpoints of academic teaching staff take centre stage in the analysis of the changing conceptions of what it means to act with integrity when teaching online. To teach with integrity in contemporary online-supported environments in higher education is not necessarily to teach the same as if one would in teaching regularly face-to-face in the classroom. The paper argues that to teach with integrity online is to teach differently. With integrity both enhanced and in some respects diminished in teaching online, the apparent contradiction can only be resolved through developing conceptions of what teaching with integrity means in the contemporary world of higher education. Implications are drawn in the context of teaching extended and wholly online units in the field of engineering.

Requirements for online teaching and learning at Deakin University : a case study

The dynamics of teaching and learning in higher education are being affected by a combination of educational, social, political and economic factors, and one of the most important changes is the extent to which Learning Management Systems (LMS) are forming the basis for online teaching and learning environments. Deakin University has just completed an extensive evaluation of learning management systems (LMS) to select an enterprise level online teaching and learning system. One of the important aspects of this process is that unlike other evaluations which focused on systems comparison, this evaluation was user-centred, taking into account teaching and learning needs to determine the LMS that would best align with those needs. This paper examines the methods and results of this collection of staff and student needs in online teaching and learning.

Different sounds, different musics, different teaching : an Australian case study in multicultural teaching and learning

This single case study is part of a wider ongoing research project, begun in 2005, entitled Intercultural attitudes of pre-service music education students from Deakin University and Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. One participant selected from the entire cohort and reinterviewed in 2009 as it was apparent that his experience and expertise outstripped all the others. This paper explores the tensions between authentic pedagogical practice, as understood by the interviewee, in community teaching and in a school. The data generated were analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Three major themes were identified: benefits of community music making, authentic learning, and reality of class music practice. The data demonstrate that authentic socio-cultural understanding is achievable in community music teaching, particularly in the honoring of what individuals bring the sharing of expertise between ensemble players and valuing community arts practice. However, as this is a case study demonstrates, at least in some schools, there is a lack of understanding of how multicultural music could and should be taught. Australian schools should encourage teachers who bring different sounds, different musics and different teaching into the classroom thus resolving to some degree, the potential mismatches between culturally developed learning styles and music teaching methods.