Teaching@Sydney

Are you interested in providing national leadership on teaching and learning in higher education, by developing collaborative activities and national and international partnerships? The Australian Learning and Teaching Council’s Fellowships Scheme aims to advance learning and teaching in higher education by supporting a group of leading educators to undertake strategic, high-profile activities in areas of importance to the sector. Through their fellowship program, Fellows explore and address a significant educational issue, develop their personal skills and profile and are ongoing advocates for excellence in learning and teaching. Fellowships involve collaborative activities and the building of national and international partnerships. Fellows become part of a national group of experts and leaders in learning and teaching in higher education.

Applications for 2010 Fellowships close on the 26^th February 2010. The University is able to send three prospective Fellowship nominees to attend a workshop in Melbourne on the 2^nd December 9.30 – 4.30. The workshop will provide a briefing on the ALTC Fellowships Scheme and the chance for participants to present an idea for a Fellowship for discussion and development with Fellows, peers and senior academic leaders.

If you are interested in attending the event as one of the University’s nominees please contact Simon Barrie at the ITL with an ‘expression of interest’ in the form of a paragraph (150 words) outlining your idea for a Fellowship and explaining the learning and teaching issue to be addressed. Expressions of interest should be received in the ITL by 11^th November. The selected nominees will be asked to provide a briefing for other interested staff at Sydney following the event.

More information on the Fellowships scheme (http://www.altc.edu.au/fellowships ) and the workshop (http://www.altc.edu.au/node/7030 ) is available on the ALTC’s website or by contacting the ITL.[close]

Making your lectures and large classes more interactive is an important way to enhance student engagement. The audience response system ‘TurningPoint’(these systems are sometimes known as clickers) has now been installed in all general teaching spaces at the University. This system can help to promote discussion, gauge students’ levels of understanding, and facilitate instant audience feedback and participation in large classes. TurningPoint uses individual hand-held keypad transmitters in conjunction with PowerPoint presentations. Students can vote on their response to a question; for example when using a multiple choice question on a slide to quickly quiz students about previous lecture content, and enhance their interest and understanding. Eric Mazur has pioneered this teaching strategy in large classes at Harvard University. To find out more about how to use this technology view a video clip on the Audio Visual Services website (click on the audience response kit icon), and to book a kit containing the hand-held keypads and the receiver please call Audio Visual Services on x16000 (menu option 2). For more information about how to use TurningPoint to enhance student learning please contact Graham Hendry in the ITL.[close]

Promoting Excellence is the theme of the 2009 Vice-Chancellor’s Teaching Showcase, to be held on Friday 6 November and opened by the Vice-Chancellor.

The morning will feature interactive panel discussions with students and with recipients of the Vice-Chancellor’s and ALTC teaching awards and of university and national teaching-related grants. In the afternoon, parallel workshop topics include publishing investigations into learning and teaching and writing applications for scholarship of teaching and learning funds.

All staff and students are invited to attend some or all of this free event, which will be held in the new teaching spaces near the Law Building. Register here.[close]

This forum will include presentations, a workshop and discussions to engage participants in questions around reflection, validity, and standards in the assessment of Work Integrated Learning. The forum will be of interest to staff involved with students undertaking ‘placements’ as part of a unit. The forum is organized by ACEN NSW

Assoc Prof Jan Orrell, a national leader in this field, will discuss how assessment of student achievement in Work Integrated Learning is often reduced to pass/fail criteria which ignores the diversity of experiences and fails to acknowledge the range of achievement of students.

A team from the Macquarie University’s Learning and Teaching Centre will also make a presentation on “Developing learning and teaching resources to support Macquarie University’s participation and community engagement initiative”. The presentation will discuss themes and issues identified from the literature and their implications for participation-type units including: research in the fields of reflection and assessment, principles for scaffolding critical reflection, challenges to developing reflective teaching capacity across disciplines, and principles for authentic learning, feedback and assessment.

When:  Tues Nov 10, 10.15am – 12.30pm
Where:  Rm 214/215 H69 Economics and Business Building

Register here by COB Thursday 5^th November

Queries to Jill Kelton j.kelton@econ.usyd.edu.au or Sarah Fletcher s.fletcher@econ.usyd.edu.au[close]

The ALTC is holding an Ideas Workshop in Melbourne on the 1^st December for up to 40 people  from Victorian and NSW universities who are interested in applying for funding to support Teaching Leadership Projects in 2010.  The ALTC will cover travel costs for those attending the workshop.  The Leadership program priorities for 2010 are:

•Institutional leadership to enhance learning and teaching through leadership capacity-building at the institutional level. Funding range: $150,000 to $220,000 - Project duration up to 2 years

• Disciplinary and cross-disciplinary leadership to enhance learning and teaching through leadership capacity building in discipline structures, communities of practice and cross-disciplinary networks. Funding range: $80,000 to $220,000 – Project duration: up to 2 years

• Consolidating leadership by building on the outcomes of projects funded in earlier years under the Leadership for Excellence in Learning and Teaching Program. Funding range: $80,000 to $150,000 - Project duration: up to 1.5 years

More information on the Leadership Grants is available on the ALTC Website  http://www.altc.edu.au/grants-funding-available or by contacting the ITL.[close]

This symposium is being organized by The University of Sydney Indigenous Knowledges Research Group, in conjunction with the Faculty of Arts, and will be held in the Refectory in the Holme Building on 14-15 December.  The symposium is intended to begin a conversation about ways forward in terms of incorporating Indigenous Knowledges and approaches to protocols, ethics, philosophy, research methodologies and pedagogies that are informed by indigenous knowledge development. This conversation will be of interest to those who already teach and/or research in the area of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander issues as well as other staff interested in developing ways in which Indigenous Australians can truly engage with the academy.

The University is fortunate to have Professor Graham Hingangaroa Smith as the keynote speaker – this will also be delivered as a Sydney Ideas Lecture. Professor Smith is a renowned educator who has worked within Aotearoa NZ and Canada on major, transformative developments within Indigenous higher education. The symposium has attracted a range of speakers who work within the emerging discipline of Indigenous Knowledges. To find out more or to register for the forum, please visit the website.[close]

Staff are invited to a workshop on ‘Engaging Students with Assessment and Feedback’ to be held at The University of Sydney on 27^th November.  The workshop is being hosted by the Faculty of Economics and Business and will be run by Dr Rust from the Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development at Oxford Brookes University in the UK.  Dr Rust is Deputy Director of the Directorate of Human Resources. He is also Deputy Director of two Centres for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETLs) at Brookes - ASKe (Assessment Standards Knowledge Exchange), and the Reinvention Centre.

This workshop is one of national series by Dr Rust.  Support is provided by the Australian Business Deans Council, the Australian Learning and Teaching Council and each host university.

The importance of assessment and feedback and their effect on student learning and student’ approaches to learning are widely acknowledged in the literature. But there is also clear evidence that our current assessment practices are generally not very good in this regard. This workshop will start by providing a theoretical model underpinning the importance of student engagement with assessment, and will then consider case study examples of how this model may be applied in practice.

Participants will be encouraged throughout the workshop to consider the potential to modify their own assessment practices, and the possibility of adopting similar approaches in their courses. You are warmly invited for refreshments at the workshop.

When: Friday, 27^th November, 2.00–4.30pm
Where: Darlington Centre School Building, Meeting Room 7
Register: 18^th November Yvonne Abela
Places for this workshop are limited so please register early.[close]

This national conference is being held in Melbourne on 3-4 December and will address leading practice approaches to integrating Indigenous health into medical education and workplace training. In addition, the Conference will provide an opportunity to discuss and challenge some current practices and discuss emerging tools and techniques to drive continuous improvement in outcomes for Indigenous health.  The conference will focus on the following areas:

• Recruitment and support of Indigenous students in medical programs
• Teaching and learning, assessment, evaluation and curriculum
• Workforce, partnership, placements and communities 
• Clinical and vocation training, cultural competence and safety

To register for the w conference or find out more about the Leaders in Medical Education network visit the website.[close]

The sixth annual international scholarship of teaching and learning conference was held in the USA in Bloomington, Indiana last week. The presentations included a mixture of reports on specific disciplines, such as “Coping with the Knowledge Explosion in the Physiology Classroom” and “Effective Models for Engaging STEM Faculty in Improving Teaching and Learning”. The conference also had a wider focus and topics such as “Canadian Contexts for Scholarship of Teaching and Learning” and “Building International Bridges Through the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning” were featured. One of the plenary addresses, titled “For Whom Do We Write? The Place and Practices of Writing in Developing the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning” was given by Dr Tai Peseta, formerly of the University of Sydney. The abstracts of the papers are available here.[close]

Sessional teachers from across the University are invited to attend a lunch time meeting to discuss a proposal outlining a strategy for further enhancing the teaching development support provided by faculties and the ITL for this particular group of staff.   Lunch will be provided.  The meeting will include a presentation of the draft proposal followed by discussion.  Feedback is keenly sought from representatives in a variety of teaching roles and a warm invitation is extended to staff currently working in the following roles to attend and contribute to the discussion: casual or sessional teachers, unit of study coordinators and other supervisors of sessional teachers, as well as those involved in management of sessional staff teaching in faculties and departments, and department heads.

The session will be held in Carslaw 354 Tuesday 10 November, 12:30 – 1:30pm. Please register for catering purposes.[close]

Are you having difficulty communicating your assessment expectations to students? Do your students seem to misunderstand your assessment criteria and standards? Research, including that by Chris Rust, Rust et al. (2003) has generated many insights into how important students understanding of assessment criteria is for their learning.  Colleagues who have been investigating this in the Law faculty at UWS offer the following insights that may help.

Step 1: Select typical good and poor examples of past students’ work – exemplars – and show them to students in class. The examples should be anonymous or if not - used with the past students’ permission; a simple reply to an email requesting their permission will suffice.

Step 2: Discuss with the class the reasons why the exemplars are good or not so good.

Step 3: Set aside time for groups of students to discuss and mark the exemplars in class, using your written assessment criteria and standards. Discuss with the class all groups’ marks/grades and the marks/grades that were actually given and reasons why.

In research using these steps with undergraduate business students in the UK, Rust et al. (2003) found that students who participated in the marking class subsequently achieved significantly better results in their assessment compared with those who did not attend the class. Rust et al. conclude that this class was the “distinguishing aspect” (p. 161) in supporting “transfer of tacit knowledge” about assessment “through the use of exemplars, marking practice and the opportunity for dialogue between staff and students” (p. 161). For more information about this tip contact Graham Hendry in the ITL.[close]