Kaleidoscope : Reframing learning and teaching evaluation through a shared stakeholder lens

Sector wide interest in Reframe: QUT’s Evaluation Framework continues with a number of institutions requesting finer details as QUT embeds the new approach to evaluation across the university in 2013. This interest, both nationally and internationally has warranted QUT’s collegial response to draw upon its experiences from developing Reframe into distilling and offering Kaleidoscope back to the sector. The word Reframe is a relevant reference for QUT’s specific re-evaluation, reframing and adoption of a new approach to evaluation; whereas Kaleidoscope reflects the unique lens through which any other institution will need to view their own cultural specificity and local context through an extensive user-led stakeholder engagement approach when introducing new approaches to learning and teaching evaluation. Kaleidoscope’s objectives are for QUT to develop its research-based stakeholder approach to distil the successful experience exhibited in the Reframe Project into a transferable set of guidelines for use by other tertiary institutions across the sector. These guidelines will assist others to design, develop, and deploy, their own culturally specific widespread organisational change informed by stakeholder engagement and organisational buy-in. It is intended that these guidelines will promote, support and enable other tertiary institutions to embark on their own evaluation projects and maximise impact. Kaleidoscope offers an institutional case study of widespread organisational change underpinned by Reframe’s (i) evidence-based methodology; (ii) research including published environmental scan, literature review (Alderman, et al., 2012), development of a conceptual model (Alderman, et al., in press 2013), project management principles (Alderman & Melanie, 2012) and national conference peer reviews; and (iii) year-long strategic project with national outreach to collaboratively engage the development of a draft set of National Guidelines. Kaleidoscope’s aims are to inform Higher Education evaluation policy development through national stakeholder engagement, the finalisation of proposed National Guidelines. In correlation with the conference paper, the authors will present a Draft Guidelines and Framework ready for external peer review by evaluation practitioners from the Higher Education sector, as part of Kaleidoscope’s dissemination strategy (Hinton & Gannaway, 2011) applying illuminative evaluation theory (Parlett & Hamilton, 1976), through conference workshops and ongoing discussions (Shapiro, et al., 1983; Jacobs, 2000). The initial National Guidelines will be distilled from the Reframe: QUT’s Evaluation Framework’s Policy, Protocols, and incorporated Business Rules. It is intended that the outcomes of Kaleidoscope are owned by and reflect sectoral engagement, including iterative evaluation through multiple avenues of dissemination and collaboration including the Higher Education sector. The dissemination strategy with the inclusion of Illuminative Evaluation methodology provides an inclusive opportunity for other institutions and stakeholders across the Higher Education sector to give voice through the information-gathering component of evaluating the draft Guidelines, providing a comprehensive understanding of the complex realities experienced across the Higher Education sector, and thereby ‘illuminating’ both the shared and unique lenses and contexts. This process will enable any final guidelines developed to have broader applicability, greater acceptance, enhanced sustainability and additional relevance benefiting the Higher Education sector, and the adoption and adaption by any single institution for their local contexts.

Kaleidoscope : shaping a better future through a stakeholder approach to widespread organisational change

The main focus of ‘Kaleidoscope: Reframing evaluation through a stakeholder approach to sustainable, cultural change in Higher Education’ is to develop a set of principles to guide user-led engagement in widespread organisational change and maximise its impact. The word kaleidoscope represents the unique lens through which each institution will need to view their cultural specificity and local context through an extensive process of collaboration and engagement, followed by communication and dissemination. Kaleidoscope has particular relevance when new approaches to learning and teaching evaluation are introduced by tertiary institutions. Building on the Reframe Project, which involved three years of user-led consultation and was designed to meet stakeholders’ needs, QUT successfully introduced a new evaluation framework in 2013 across the university. Reframe was evidence based, involved scholarly reflection and was founded on a strong theoretical framework. The evolution of the evaluation framework included analysis of scholarly literature and environmental scans across the higher education sector (Alderman, et al., 2012), researched development of conceptual theory (Alderman, et al., in press 2013), incorporated the stakeholder voice and framed within project management principles (Alderman & Melanie, 2012). Kaleidoscope’s objectives are for QUT to develop its research-based stakeholder approach to distil the successful experience exhibited in the Reframe Project into a transferable set of guidelines for use by other tertiary institutions across the sectors. These guidelines will assist others to design, develop, and deploy, their own culturally specific widespread organisational change informed by stakeholder engagement and organisational buy-in. It is intended that these guidelines will promote, support and enable other tertiary institutions to embark on their own projects and maximise the impact. In correlation with a our conference paper, this round table presents the Draft Guidelines and Framework ready for external peer review by evaluation practitioners, as part of Kaleidoscope’s dissemination (Hinton & Gannaway, 2011) applying illuminative evaluation theory (Parlett & Hamilton, 1976), through conference workshops and linked round table discussions (Shapiro, et al., 1983; Jacobs, 2000).

Kaleidoscope : illuminating learning and teaching evaluation for a shared stakeholder lens

Within the Australian higher education sector, institutions are required to evaluate teaching, units and courses to assure the quality of the student learning experience, however with hardly any regulatory parameters guiding institutions, and with disparate practices, there are few opportunities to benchmakr across institutions or the sector. QUT has received interest and requests from national and international universities on accessing Reframe: QUT's Evaluation Framework.

Health Law's Kaleidoscope : Health Law Rights in a Global Age

Within contemporary society the themes of globalization, health and regulation interlock in complex patterns, changing in response to the mix of cultural differences, regulatory preferences and available resources. To turn the kaleidoscope and to change the mix is to change the pattern. This book is about those patterns as they arise in the contemporary legal, health and ethical context, exploring the transformations and challenges brought by technological change and the regulatory options in the contemporary global village.

Revolving kaleidoscope : site-specificity and the part object in contemporary installation art

This practice-led research project explores the possibilities for restaging and reconfiguring contemporary art installations in multiple and different locations. By exploring ideas and art that demonstrate a kaleidoscopic approach to creative practice, this project examines how analysing artists' particular processes can achieve new understandings and experiences of installation art. This project achieves this through reflection on, and analysis of creative works made throughout the research, and a critical examination of contemporary art practices.

Turning the Kaleidoscope - (E)FL Educational Experience and Inquiry as Auto/biography

This book is a study on learning, teaching/counselling, and research on the two. My quest has been to find a pedagogically-motivated way of researching learning and teaching interaction, and in particular counselling, in an autonomous language-learning environment. I have tried to develop a method that would make room for lived experience, meaning-making and narrating, because in my view these all characterise learning encounters between language learners and counsellors, and learners and their peers. Lived experience as a source of meaning, telling and co-telling becomes especially significant when we try to listen to the diverse personal and academic voices of the past as expressed in autobiographical narratives. I have aimed at researching various ALMS dialogues (Autonomous Learning Modules, University of Helsinki Language Centre English course and programme), and autobiographical narratives within them, in a way that shows respect for the participants, and that is relevant, reflective and, most importantly, self-reflexive. My interest has been in autobiographical telling in (E)FL [(English as a) foreign language], both in students first-person written texts on their language- learning histories and in the sharing of stories between learners and a counsellor. I have turned to narrative inquiry in my quest and have written the thesis as an experiential narrative. In particular, I have studied learners and counsellors in one and the same story, as characters in one narrative, in an attempt to avoid the impression that I am telling yet another separate, anecdotal story, retrospectively. Through narrative, I have shed light on the subjective dimensions of language learning and experience, and have come closer to understanding the emotional aspects of learning encounters. I have questioned and rejected a distanced and objective approach to describing learning and teaching/counselling. I have argued for a holistic and experiential approach to (E)FL encounters in which there is a need to see emotion and cognition as intertwined, and thus to appreciate learners and counsellors emotionally-charged experiences as integral to their identities. I have also argued for a way of describing such encounters as they are situated in history, time, autobiography, and the learning context. I have turned my gaze on various constellations of lived experience: the data was collected on various occasions and in various settings during one course and consists of videotaped group sessions, individual counselling sessions between students and their group counsellor, biographic narrative interviews with myself, open-ended personally-inspired reflection texts written by the students about their language-learning histories, and student logs and diaries. I do not consider data collection an unproblematic occasion, or innocent practice, and I defend the integrity of the research process. Research writing cannot be separated from narrative field work and analysing and interpreting the data. The foci in my work have turned to be the following: 1) describing ALMS encounters and specifying their narrative aspects; 2) reconceptualising learner and teacher autonomy in ALMS and in (E)FL; 2) developing (E)FL methodologically through a teacher-researcher s identity work; 4) research writing as a dialogical narrative process, and the thesis as an experiential narrative. Identity and writing as inquiry, and the deeply narrative and autobiographical nature of the (E)FL teaching/counselling/researching have come to the fore in this research. Research writing as a relational activity and its implications for situated ways of knowing and knowledge turned out to be important foci. I have also focussed on the context-bound and local teacher knowledge and ways of knowing about being a teacher, and I have argued for personal ways of knowing about, and learning and studying foreign languages. I discuss research as auto/biography: as a practising counsellor I use my own life and (E)FL experience to understand and interpret the stories of the research participants even though I was not involved in their course work. The supposedly static binaries of learner/teacher, and also learner autonomy/teacher autonomy, are thus brought into the discussion. I have highlighted the infinite variability and ever-changing nature of learning and teaching English, but the book is also of relevance to foreign language education in general.

Early childhood pedagogical practice within a cultural kaleidoscope

Please consult the paper edition of this thesis to read. It is available on the 5th Floor of the Library at Call Number: Z 9999 E38 K39 2006

Focusing the kaleidoscope: investigating the newly formed role of 'Academic Lead’ at a research-led University

Now, more than ever, higher education institutions are reflecting on the need for flexible leadership models to help adapt to the fast changing academic environment. Rapid shifts in the sector are contributing to a kaleidoscopic ‘supercomplexity’ of challenges, structures, processes and value frameworks for academics who lead and for those who are led. How are institutions’ leadership structures and roles developing in response to these changes? And how do these responses affect academic staff in relation to their identity, status and career trajectory? This paper reports on a Leadership Foundation funded research project exploring the ways in which one UK institution has implemented a new ‘distributed’ leadership model. Crucially, the project examines the impact of the model on both those who are leaders and those being led.

Kaleidoscope configurations for reflectance measurement

Simulations of different configurations of the symmetrical tapered kaleidoscope are performed to assess their merits for measurement of BRDFs and BTFs. The relationship between optimal kaleidoscope layout, and factors such as hardware restrictions and the resolution of the required reflectance function, is derived. The effect on the measurement of the reflectance function of changing these independent variables is examined through the simulation. These experiments highlight issues affecting the measurement of BTFs using kaleidoscopes, and suggest configurations that allow sampling at regular parameter intervals. A number of other kaleidoscope architectures are explored, which offer the benefits of potentially doubling the range of directions that can be sampled, and allowing adaptive control of sample intervals.

The kaleidoscope of competitiveness

Includes bibliography

The Kaleidoscope; or, Literary and scientific mirror, containing a variety of original and select articles, literature, men and manners, amusement, criticism, elegant extracts, poetry, anecdotes, biography, meteorology, the drama, arts and sciences, voyages and travels, natural history, diary of the months, fashions, &c. ...

Mode of access: Internet.