Academic Services Division - Papers

Discursive evaluation of water recycling

Gregory R. Hampton — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 21:42:51 PST

This study provides details on the development of a qualitative approach to the assessment of public evaluation of water recycling schemes. The approach involved the presentation to a small group of information and audiovisual material on the water cycle and wastewater treatment followed by the use of focus group style questioning to elicit discussion and questioning of the material. Qualitative analysis, based on a discursive method of evaluation, was used to assess dialogue in the groups, and it was concluded that participants used the context of the local scheme to assess their use of recycled water and consider extending the application of recycled water to more personal uses. Participants also tended to use item evaluation rather than category evaluation of water recycling. Agreement responses within workshops also influenced the discourse of evaluation of water reuse.

Narrative policy analysis and the integration of public involvement in decision making

Gregory R. Hampton — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 21:42:48 PST

Public involvement in environmental policy analysis and planning may be in some cases for the purpose of incorporating public values and preferences in decision making. Narrative policy analysis is put forward as a method, which is particularly useful to the practice of public involvement for maintaining a juxtaposition of views throughout the policy development and planning process. It is argued that this process may facilitate the consideration of public preferences in a decision-making process. This can be achieved through the joint development of a meta-narrative.

Beyond "information": Integrating consultation and education for water recycling initiatives

Stewart Russell — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 21:42:46 PST

Recycling is starting to play a significant role in water management in drought-prone Australia. Public responses to recycling are still not well understood, and opportunities for public participation have been limited. We have experimented with a technique to explore responses qualitatively and to encourage deliberation. In smallgroup meetings, we provide information on recycling technologies and issues and integrate this with opportunities to discuss and question. We have trialed the approach in communities with different experiences of recycling. Our rationale comes from dissatisfaction with existing consultation processes, and with a prevalent technocratic view that people simply need technical information to correct misperceptions and overcome emotional responses; from issues in literatures on participation and social acceptance of technologies; and from a concern that apparent support for recycling is not robust. We illustrate insights from the work into processes of deliberation and possibilities for achieving a better understanding through such methods.

Integrating tertiary literacy into the curriculum: effects on performance and retention

Gregory R. Hampton — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 21:42:42 PST

Tertiary literacy instruction and assessment were introduced into two first year biology subjects as part of a collaboration between Biological Sciences and Learning Development staff at the University of Wollongong. In both subjects, the project focussed on scientific report assessment items based on aspects of the practical curriculum. The project involved production and use of a web site giving instruction in report writing and general guidance on scientific writing, marking schemes using explicit criteria including literacy based criteria, a peer marking tutorial, and marking and feedback using the schemes. The results from assessments in the second subject, which included the biology cohort but also a new cohort from another faculty, indicated improved literacy in those students who had received instruction in the first subject. Moreover, longitudinal data suggests that this benefit was translated into higher pass rates and greater retention rates for the students in these classes compared to others in the Faculty. While it is impossible to make a causal link between these pass and retention rates and the literacy instruction, the quantitative results and qualitative observations indicate the value of such an approach.

Academic Standards versus Disability Rights

Richard Gosden — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 21:42:38 PST

A simmering controversy has been running in the United states since 1995 over the perceived conflict between the maintenance of academic standards and the rights of disabled university students. Recent developments are set to raise the same issue in Australian universities. The first of these developments is the shift in the emphasis of academic standards with the implementation of the Generic Skills Assessment (GSA) program. The second is the release of draft disability standards for education to streamline enforcement of the Commonwealth's Disability Discrimination Act (DDA). The DDA protects disabled people against discrimination in education. Amongst the many types of disabled people protected are those who are unable to read, write or communicate effectively because of learning disabilities; and others who are unable to concentrate and pay attention properly because of mental disorders like attention deficit disorder. Hitherto, universities have found ways to comply with the DDA without compromising academic standards by providing these types of disabled students with accommodations that take the form of alternative methods of examination, extra exam time, technological assistance, scribes, readers, etc. However, the GSA has been designed for standardised implementation and doesn't allow for this type of flexibility. Further, generic skills testing specifically discriminates against students with learning disabilities and some mental disorders because it is the inability to master particular types of generic skills that defines these types of disabilities. The conclusion is that if discrimination is to be avoided either the GSA must be adapted to suit the needs of disabled students or universities must consider ways to foster the capacity of students with disabilities to develop and utilise generic skills in an independent manner.

Capturing Business Intelligence Required for Targeted Marketing, Demonstrating Value, and Driving Process Improvement

Brian Cox — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 14:16:48 PST

The University of Wollongong (UOW) has undertaken an innovative and collaborative research project to demonstrate the value that can be provided by academic libraries. The tool developed, the “Library Cube”, is a data warehouse linking student borrowing and use of electronic resources to students’ academic grades and demographic information. The project is different to other institutions’ efforts to link usage to student outcomes, in that the Library Cube is not a one-off research project, but is now an ongoing part of UOW’s systems and performance reporting and represents a fundamental shift in evaluating the student experience through the integration of discrete systems and datasets.

The Library Cube demonstrates a new direction for evidence-based research. Analysis enabled through the Cube has revealed a very strong relationship between library usage and students’ academic performance. This information will improve UOW Library’s ability to demonstrate value to clients and stakeholders. The Library Cube has also delivered some anticipated and unexpected findings on the relationship between social variables (such as gender, age, and citizenship) and library usage behaviors; and in doing so has also identified potential target audiences for Library promotions and engagement strategies.

A new age in higher education or just a little bit of history repeating? : linking the past present and future of ALL in Australia

Alisa Percy — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 15:26:41 PST

For those relatively new to the field of Academic Language and Learning, the ‘new’ social inclusion agenda may appear as the dawning of a new age in higher education—a revolutionary moment in history where the qualitative transformation of teaching and learning feels imminent. For others, it may feel like ‘a little bit of history repeating’. This paper critically examines the limitations of the agency of ALL in ‘forging new directions’ by considering how the past haunts the present. Using the lens of governmentality (Foucault, 1991; Rose, 1999; Dean, 1999), the paper makes the claim that, given that ALL is deeply embedded in the social regulation of conduct in the academy, new directions emerge, not so much from the wisdom of ALL, but from the constellation of historical circumstance, political reasoning, and social, economic and institutional exigencies that reconfigure the university as an apparatus of government, reconstitute the student as an object of government, and position the ALL practitioner in particular ways at particular times to do particular work. This paper provides a framework for making sense of our institutional intelligibility and considering future directions through this lens.

A Systematic Approach to Improving University Teaching

Max Gillett — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 20:31:01 PST

Traditionally the Australian system of higher education has evaluated and rewarded universities on the basis of their research output. In recent years, however, there has been a Significant move to evaluate and acknowledge excellence in teaching. Consequently many institutions have established policies and programs for the improvement of teaching. Centres for staff development, graduate award courses and research programs for research on teaching and learning have appeared in universities across the country (Martin & Ramsden, 1994).

In this context several interesting developments have occurred at the University of Wollongong. First, several initiatives were designed to identify and reward good teaching. These include the creation of the Vice-Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching, the use of teaching performance as a criterion for the annual review process and for tenure and promo~on decisions, and a compulsory program of student evaluations of teaching. Second, a new Centre for Research on Teaching and Learning was established. Third, the course Introduction. to Tertiary Teaching (ITT) was designed and offered to all academic and suitably qualified non-academic staff. This course is articulated into a set of "nested" courses offered by the Faculty of Education, including a Graduate Certificate of Higher Education and a Master of Education degree. Fourth, in 1994 a policy was implemented requiring all new academic staff to complete the ITT course within one year of appointment.

Building employability skills in ICT Master coursework curriculum

Fazel Naghdy — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 19:57:47 PST

Development and delivery of a subject called Employability Skills and ICT Workplace Practice, targeted at international students taking Masters of Engineering Studies is reported. Almost all of the students are international with a desire to stay and work in Australia. In practice however, seeking professional employment in Australia has proved quite challenging for many of these students. A study conducted by the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry identifies certain ‘soft skills’ in demand by employers. These include: initiative, communication, teamwork, technology, problem solving, self-management and planning. The learning objectives of the subject are designed to further develop and enhance such skills. The design and structure of the subject are described. The evaluations conducted on the first delivery of the subject strongly indicate that the learning objectives set for the subject are achieved and a high degree of student achievement and satisfaction is obtained.

Developing Academic Literacy in Context: a cross-national investigation

Janice Skillen — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 19:57:43 PST

Whilst the development of sophisticated literacy has always been a fundamental aim of higher education, the responsibility for its development has often been left to the individual student. Students are of course expected to exit tertiary education programs with significantly greater fluency in academic discourse, communicative competence and capacity for critical analysis than they enter with, but whether immersion is sufficient to ensure achievement of the desired level of development is a matter of debate (and this crucial debate is all too often ignored!). Many institutions of higher education, however, have long recognized the need for some form of explicit teaching of the various linguistic and cultural norms of academia and the professions, but how to achieve greatest efficacy and efficiency of such teaching needs much discussion. Amongst the wide variety of approaches taken in the teaching of academic literacy, instruction contextualized within disciplinary subjects is increasingly recognized as a fruitful approach. The University of Wollongongs (UoW) practice in this area has achieved significant improvements in students academic writing, and has also been shown to make significant improvement to overall learning and student retention. This paper reports on a research project that is testing the transferability of UoWs approach across national borders and analyzing its potential to achieve similar outcomes in different contexts. The project is a collaborative venture between the UoW in Australia and colleagues in the UK and the US - at Queen Mary University of London, Coventry University and the Open University as well as the Universities of Stanford, Cornell and Iowa State. The paper outlines the positive preliminary results achieved to date in three concurrent trials of contextualized teaching within various subjects in the three quite different partner institutions in the UK. It also discusses what these outcomes mean to the project as a whole, and indicates future directions in the quest for satisfactory answers to the key questions driving this research namely, to what extent can the teaching and evaluation procedures used at UoW be replicated in other/different contexts, and can similar improvements in student writing and learning be obtained in any context through the application of practice used at UoW.

Developing Academic Literacy in Context

Emily Rose Purser — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 19:57:37 PST

Where, when and how (indeed whether) academic writing should be taught to university students, who are not necessarily aiming to study ‹language› per se, has long been a concern in higher education. While students need to develop high level communication skills, in genres often quite specific to higher education, in order that their learning can be assessed, teaching them academic writing during the course of their disciplinary studies raises a number of pedagogical, organisational and research issues. This paper reports on a collaboration between a group of academics in different geographic and institutional locations, who share a dream of improving student learning through curriculum-integrated teaching of writing. Their project has attempted to apply a model of ‹learning development› practice that works well in one arena to a range of new contexts, in order to test its efficacy and transferability. Results indicate that the pedagogical strategies tried (e. g. collaborative, inter-disciplinary design of learning tasks, resources and assessment processes based on analysis of contextually-specific literacy demands) prove ‹true› in various situations, enabling positive changes – in student learning, in the design of curricula, in teachers’ professional development and in general perceptions of the role of language in learning.

Towards benchmarking AALL practices

Bronwyn A. James — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 19:57:32 PST

The aim of the project was to do some of the initial leg work that would enable AALL as a professional body to meaningfully benchmark the diverse range of practices currently employed by AALL units to support their students' development of core, disciplinary academic and professional skills and attributes.

Stakeholders in academic integrity: Embedding academic literacies into three professional degree programs

Isla A. Bowen — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 19:57:27 PST

Teaching academic literacy: testing the transferability of sound pedagogic practice

Emily Rose Purser — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 19:57:22 PST

Academic Writing

Emily Rose Purser — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 19:57:18 PST

Teaching Thesis Writing, Policy and Practice at an Australian University

Janice Skillen — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 19:57:13 PST

As an indicator of serious engagement in an academic discourse, thesis writing enjoys universal recognition. While its importance in higher education is unquestioned, the need to teach students how to write a thesis (let alone what method to use) has been less generally accepted. In Australia, explicit instruction in thesis writing was rare until quite recently, but is now widespread and becoming almost mandatory. This paper briefly explains the shift and describes how the teaching of thesis writing is approached at the University of Wollongong. UoW’s major provider of academic skills instruction – Learning Development – supports student learning across both undergraduate and postgraduate programs, and is recognised within Australia as an innovative and leading provider of quality methods and resources for instruction in language, literacy and learning in tertiary education. The paper outlines some key strategies and techniques that the LD unit uses to teach thesis writing, and indicates the impact of its practices on students and supervisors. While critical discussion of the theoretical bases of its work is invited, the focus of this paper is on describing the unit’s practices.

Developing our careers, transforming ourselves: the UOW new professionals network

Kristy Newton — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 16:12:02 PST

The New Professionals Network was formed in response to an emerging awareness of the desire for peer to peer support at the University of Wollongong Library, particularly among new and recently graduated professionals. The purpose of the Network is to provide a space for staff in the first five years of their careers to discuss professional development issues, facilitate experience and knowledge sharing, and develop effective communication skills through articulating their experiences and opinions. As the Network has evolved, it has served as a valuable tool for personal and professional metamorphosis. Members report a higher level of professional confidence, a deeper engagement with professional issues, and heightened inspiration and skills to begin furthering their own professional development outside the Network. Several members of the Network have since continued to take up leadership roles within the Library. The traditional two-person mentoring relationship has been extended to encompass group mentoring, with former members continuing to act as mentors to current members. Staff who are actively engaged in the profession, possess an innovative and creative mindset, and who feel that they are supported in this development are of significant benefit to the organisation. These staff act to generate new ideas and further a workplace culture that values and promotes active professional development. The New Professionals Network also helps to socialise new staff into the professional environment, and provides an opportunity for them to learn from more experienced staff. Guest speakers from prominent positions in the Library have attended meetings on a semi-regular basis to discuss their own professional development journey, and the Network itself is comprised of staff with varying levels of professional experience. This paper discusses the creation and evolution of the New Professionals Network, and considers the potential for wider application of similar models at other Australian libraries.

Click or clique? Using educational technology to address students' anxieties about peer evaluation

Ruth Walker — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 16:18:47 PST

Peer bias is recognised as a primary factor in negative student perceptions of peer assessment strategies. This study trialled the use of classroom response systems, widely known as clickers, in small seminar classes in order to actively engage students in their subject’s assessment process while providing the anonymity that would lessen the impact of peer pressure. Focus group reflection on the students’ impressions of the peer evaluation process, the use of clickers, and their anxieties about potential peer bias were analysed in the light of the results of teacher and class evaluations of each individual student presentation. The findings revealed that students recognised the value of peer assessment in promoting class engagement and active learning, despite their ongoing resistance to the practice of peer review. An unexpected finding suggested that the clickers, selected as an educational technology for their appeal and ease of use by the ‘digital native’ student already familiar with a variety of mobile communication and gaming devices, reinforced student perception that the peer review process was akin to a popularity contest.

Improvement of Jc by cold high pressure densification of binary, 18-filament in situ MgB2 wires

Md S. Hossain — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 21:57:46 PST

Articulating and comparing standards through benchmarking of assessment

Sara Booth — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 21:57:38 PST

The universities of Deakin, Tasmania (UTAS) and Wollongong (UOW) are not aligned with any university groups or networks. This paper presents their cross-institutional benchmarking relationship as a case study in building the necessary trust, collaboration and shared methodology. The partnership was distinguished by the way it tapped into a collegial quality improvement culture. It had its genesis at the 2009 AUQF conference and the partners adapted and ‘test-drove’ a framework previously developed by an ALTC Teaching Quality Indicators Project team. UTAS and UOW had formerly been involved in a trial benchmarking project on academic transition support in 2009 and extended this partnership to Deakin. The universities are comparable in terms of establishment, discipline areas, regional presence and experience of the AUQA audit cycle, with some significant contextual differences that needed to be recognised, such as structures and terminology. They are at similar stages in relation to the development of their benchmarking policy and processes. The focus on assessment ensured the project would explore the issues central to the Cycle 2 AUQA audits, such as standards, learning outcomes and student feedback. The explicit benchmarking of assessment processes made transparent the areas of improvement and areas of good practice in relation to assessment standards. Outcomes included action plans for each university and a robust framework for benchmarking assessment.