The Patches program : supporting the development of Malaysian pre-service teachers' academic literacy

The Patches program involves Malaysian pre-service teachers working closely with Australian pre-service teachers on a series of academic and intercultural communication tasks. A recurring problem for international students is the challenge to develop social relationships with Australian students. Similarly, it is often difficult for Australian students to step outside their accustomed social worlds to establish relationships with international students. The Patches Program supported rich cross-cultural social and academic exchanges among the students facilitating the development of students' academic literacy skills, their knowledge of self and knowledge of learning, and their skills in cross-cultural communication.

Transforming educational practice : teachers' perceptions of embedding academic litaracy support within a B.Ed twinning program

An academic literacies approach frames students as active participants in their own learning as they develop their voice and identity. This paper describes teachers’ perceptions of developing and delivering an academic literacies program to TESOL pre-service teachers in a B.Ed twinning program. Data indicates that an academic literacies program is a dynamic process that is ever evolving in order to meet students’ needs. A cornerstone of the program was the continual and open communication between teachers to ensure that students’ needs were met. Additionally, a collaborative approach between twinning partners needs to occur in order for the benefits of the academic literacies program to continue for students.

Maintenance person or architect? The role of academic advertising research in building better understanding

This paper suggests that, while advertising has changed, advertising research has not. Indeed, questions asked of advertising research more than 20 years ago have still not been answered. The enormity of change in advertising compounded by the lack of response from researchers suggests the traditional academic advertising research model requires more than routine maintenance. It seeks an architect with vision to redesign an academic research model that is probably broken or badly outdated. Five areas of the academic research approach are identified as needing rethinking: (1) the advertising problem, (2) sample frame and subjects, (3) assumptions regarding consumer behaviour, (4) research methodologies and (5) findings. Suggestions are made for improvement. But perhaps the biggest challenge is academic leadership. This paper proposes the establishment of a blue-ribbon panel to report back on recommended changes or improvements.

Academic practice as explanatory framework : reconceptualising international student academic engagement and university teaching

This paper joins growing interest in the concept of practice, and uses it to reconceptualise international student engagement with the demands of study at an Australian university. Practice foregrounds institutional structures and student agency and brings together psychologically- and socially-oriented perspectives on international student learning approaches. Utilising discourse theory, practice is defined as habitual and individual instances of socially-contextualised configurations of elements such as actions and interactions, roles and relations, identities, objects, values, and language. In the university context, academic practice highlights the institutionally-sanctioned ways of knowing, doing and being that constitute academic tasks. The concept is applied here to six international students’ ‘readings’ of and strategic responses to academic work in a Master of Education course. It is argued that academic practice provides a comprehensive framework for explaining the interface between university academic requirements and international student learning, and the crucial role that teaching has in facilitating the experience.

The five myths of academic standards

This script provided the basis for a short DVD produced in 2010. The script and DVD were products of research into the introduction of 'minimum threshold' academic standards to Australian Universities. Learning and teaching academic standards are publicly defensible statements about academic standards in all disciplines, intended to establish 'baseline expectations' for undergraduate and postgraduate degrees. The script was developed using an 'anti-model' approach to character and narrative. This produced a set of deliberately skewed perspectives on the standards initiative, which are intended stimulate discussion and debate on the topic. The DVD has been shown to a range of stakeholder audiences in a variety of academic forums.

Changing academic practice to prepare nursing undergraduates for an evidence-based approach

Evidence based practice (EBP) has been accepted as a process to assist health professionals in clinical decision making to improve patient outcomes. It requires applying skills in a prescribed sequence to critique existing practices. Many countries, including Australia, require nurses to demonstrate competencies in EBP skills to be registered. In the last ten years, this has lead to universities incorporating EBP in undergraduate nursing degree courses. The literature reports many challenges including students’ difficulties in critically appraising research evidence, and their need for both simplification of the process and extensive support. The purpose of our study was to investigate the effectiveness of a standalone introductory EBP subject for a diverse group of third-year undergraduates, based on a novel but challenging approach to assessment. Despite many changes made in the second iteration of the subject, most students’ perceptions of the subject’s difficulty remained unchanged. This research aligns with the issues identified in the literature and has wider applicability to the teaching of rapidly changing disciplines, where evidence-driven consumers have easy access to information and expect up-to-date practices.

Re-generating the praxis of academic staff development

Effective academic workforce staff development remains a challenge in higher education. This thesis-by-publication examined the importance of alternative paradigms for academic staff development, focusing specifically on arts-based learning as a non-traditional approach to transformative learning for management and self-development within the business of higher education. The research question asked was whether or not the facilitation of staff development through the practice of arts-based transformational learning supported academic aims in higher education, based on data obtained with the participants of the academic staff development program at one Australian university over a three year period. Over that three year period, eighty academics participated in one large metropolitan Australian university’s arts-based academic development program. The research approach required analysis of the transcribed one-on-one hermeneutic-based conversations with fifteen self-selected academics, five from each year, and with a focus group of twenty other self-selected academics from all three years. The study’s findings provided evidence that supported the need for academic staff development that prepared academics to be engaged and creative and therefore more likely to be responsive to emerging issues and to be innovative in the presence of constraints, including organisational constraints. The qualitative participative conversation transcription data found that arts-based lifelong learning processes provided participant perception of enhanced capabilities for self-creation and clarity of transformational action in academic career management. The study presented a new and innovative Artful Learning Wave Trajectory learning model to engender academic professional artistry. The findings provided developers with support for using a non-traditional strategy of transformational learning.

Integrating a sustainable academic career around scholarly learning and teaching activities

To be scholarly in learning and teaching is rigorous academic work. It demands: currency and command of both discipline subject matter and educational theory; inquiring, methodical, and reflective approaches; the collection, evaluation and documentation of evidence of learning and teaching efficacy; and, optimally, entails participation in and communication among a community of teaching professionals. This chapter examines the author’s own practice in this regard to explicate the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of scholarly and scholarship approaches, as much as the ‘what’ and ‘where’ of that endeavour. In doing so, this meta‐analysis is made ‘community property’, in the same way that Shulman (1993: 6) exhorted we ‘change the status of teaching from private to community property’ so that teaching might be more greatly valued in the academy.

Towards a classification of criterion referenced assessment models in mathematics courses : student and academic perspectives

We present the findings of a study into the implementation of explicitly criterion- referenced assessment in undergraduate courses in mathematics. We discuss students' concepts of criterion referencing and also the various interpretations that this concept has among mathematics educators. Our primary goal was to move towards a classification of criterion referencing models in quantitative courses. A secondary goal was to investigate whether explicitly presenting assessment criteria to students was useful to them and guided them in responding to assessment tasks. The data and feedback from students indicates that while students found the criteria easy to understand and useful in informing them as to how they would be graded, it did not alter the way the actually approached the assessment activity.

Pedagogy of feedback on student academic writing : research supervisor practices for the end of the research degree candidature

All academic writing is advanced with the benefit of feedback about the writing. In the case of the academic writing genres of the research proposal and the dissertation, feedback is usually provided by the research supervisor. Given that academic writing development is a process, and in the case of the research proposal and dissertation, writing which develops over time, it seems likely that the nature of feedback on drafts written early in the candidature may be different from feedback provided by the research supervisor later in a student’s candidature. ----- ----- When a research supervisor has been reading a student’s writing over a period of time, their own familiarity with the writing generates a risk to their ability to provide critical and objective feedback. Particularly by the end of a student’s candidature, the research supervisor’s familiarity with the work may cause them to miss elements of writing improvement. ----- ----- The author, as a research supervisor, has developed a feedback grid to facilitate feedback on the final drafts of a dissertation. This feedback grid is generated by the embedded promises in the early sections of the dissertation, which are then used to audit the content of the final sections of the dissertation to ascertain whether promises made have been fulfilled. This provides a strategy for the research supervisor to step back from the work and read the dissertation with the agenda of a dissertation examiner. ----- ----- The grid is one strategy within a broader pedagogy of providing feedback on writing samples.

Ethical tensions and academic leaders

Internationally universities have been characterised by shrinking government funding, fierce competition for student enrolments, and greater pressures to become commercially viable. It is against this complex background that academic leaders have been required to confront and resolve a multitude of conflicting interests as they seek to balance a variety of values in their decision-making processes. In this article we put forward a model of ethical decision-making developed from empirical research and literature. To test the efficacy of the model, a case scenario is posed. The article concludes by raising a number of implications for academic leaders regarding ongoing professional learning needed in this area.

The role of academic community in higher learning : Alternatives to a drive-thru education

The purpose of our paper is to illustrate the fundamental importance of developing academic community among first year students. We argue that a sense of academic community is of fundamental importance in combating the effects of the neo-liberal economic discourse on higher education, and that the values of higher education are incongruent with those of economic rationalism. The discursive commodification of the student, and of education itself, works against the formation of community, both within the university environment and in the wider society. We argue that, at present, the dominant discourse shaping the social practice of higher education is that of neo-liberal economics. Community values stand in opposition to the dominant discourse, and are integral to the long-term survival of a socially critical and socially responsive society. We conclude that the importance of establishing a sense of academic community during the first year of university is justified by its ultimate value to society.

Academic skills and scholarship for nurses : building aspiration and preparing nurses for academic success

Academic Skills and Scholarship for Nurses is a pilot programme which addresses academic aspiration and study preparedness of mature aged students. It is a series of four workshops designed and implemented by QUT Library staff in collaboration with Nursing and Midwifery academics, for pre- and post- registration nursing staff within the region of Caboolture, Redcliffe and Kilcoy. The programme extends QUT Library’s learning and study support expertise to the local community. The intended outcomes of the programme are fourfold. Firstly, encourage educational aspirations of mature age students, to establish realistic expectations and practical strategies for beginning tertiary study. Secondly, skills developed will be congruent with lifelong learning principles and continuing professional development requirements of professional nursing bodies. Thirdly, alignment with QUT strategies for widening participation in higher education and finally, strengthen existing relationships between academic and professional staff, and QUT and the local community for the benefit of all stakeholders.

Exploring the role of the governing body (board) in information technology governance : a study of Australian universities

In this thesis, I advance the understanding of information technology (IT) governance research and corporate governance research by considering the question “How do boards govern IT?” The importance of IT to business has increased over the last decade, but there has been little academic research which has focused on boards and their role in the governance of IT (Van Grembergen, De Haes and Guldentops, 2004). Most of the research on information technology governance (ITG) has focused on advancing the understanding and measurement of the components of the ITG model (Buckby, Best & Stewart, 2008; Wilkin & Chenhall, 2010), a model recommended by the IT Governance Institute (2003) as ‘best practice’ for boards to use in governing IT. IT governance is considered to be the responsibility of the board and is said to form an important subset of an organisation’s corporate governance processes (Borth & Bradley, 2008). Boards need to govern IT as a result of the large capital investment in IT resources and high dependency on IT by organisations. Van Grembergen, De Haes and Guldentops (2004) and De Haes & Van Grembergen (2009) indicate that corporate governance matters are not able to be effectively discharged unless IT is being governed properly, and call for further specific research on the role of the board in ITG. Researchers also indicate that the link between corporate governance and IT governance has been neglected (Borth & Bradley, 2008; Musson & Jordan, 2005; Bhattacharjya & Chang, 2008). This thesis will address this gap in the ITG literature by providing the bridge between the ITG and corporate governance literatures. My thesis uses a critical realist epistemology and a mixed method approach to gather insights into my research question. In the first phase of my research I develop a survey instrument to assess whether boards consider the components of the ITG model in governing IT. The results of this first study indicated that directors do not conceptualise their role in governing IT using the elements of the ITG model. Thus, I moved to focus on whether prominent corporate governance theories might elucidate how boards govern IT. In the second phase of the research, I used a qualitative inductive case based study to assess whether agency, stewardship and resource dependence theories explain how boards govern IT in Australian universities. As the first in-depth study of university IT governance processes, my research contributes to the ITG research field by revealing that Australian university board governance of IT is characterized by a combination of agency theory and stewardship theory behaviours and processes. The study also identified strong links between a university’s IT structure and evidence of agency and stewardship theories. This link provides insight into the structures element of the emerging enterprise governance of IT framework (Van Grembergen, De Haes & Guldentops, 2004; De Haes & Van Grembergen, 2009; Van Grembergen & De Haes, 2009b; Ko & Fink, 2010). My research makes an important contribution to governance research by identifying a key link between corporate and ITG literatures and providing insight into board IT governance processes. The research conducted in my thesis should encourage future researchers to continue to explore the links between corporate and IT governance research.