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.<br /

Funding Reforms in Malaysian Public Universities from the Perspective of Strategic Planning

AbstractThe Malaysian Federal Government through Ministry of Higher Education has come out with the initiative to implement the National Higher Education Strategic Plan beyond 2020. This strategic plan focuses on the sustainability of the higher education system in Malaysia. The overall planning included improving the teaching and learning, research and development, engagement and internationalisation of higher education in Malaysia. A part from the strategic planning, the government has also introduce the funding reforms. In order to develop sustainability in today competitive environment, universities must have strong strategic plans. This concept paper discussed the challenge faces the public universities in Malaysia to achieve the government objectives as stated in the Federal Government blue prints

Toward new models of flexible education to enhance quality in Australian higher education

In this chapter we focus on models of flexible education as related to Australian higher education (with an argument that this is typical of developments worldwide). Moreover, Deakin University&rsquo;s longstanding experience in flexible, online and distance education, as a case study of changes in Australian higher education, will be highlighted, with a particular emphasis on developments in teaching engineering and technology flexibly. To begin, we provide coverage of contemporary developments in quality enhancements in teaching and learning in Australian higher education arguing that flexible education is a key institutional response to external demands. The meanings of flexible education and blended learning are then considered and a contingency-based framework for designing flexible education outlined. The framework will consider models of flexible education design in the light of goals, the roles, needs and circumstances of teaching staff and learners, the changing technological environment, and the requirements of various external stakeholders. The focus will then move to course and unit concerns relating to flexible educational models of course design and operation as illustrated through the case of engineering and technology at Deakin. The final section will give some consideration to future directions in flexible education.<br /

Framing the role of technologies in the recognition and development of staff capacities to enhance learning in higher education

There are practical initiatives which can be taken by university management to move institutions forward by engaging a broad range of staff and in cultivating leadership capabilities in teaching and learning. These initiatives are considered in terms of 12 &lsquo;levers of engagement&rsquo; currently being implemented in our university, and shown below. Deakin, as a major flexible education provider, is used as an institutional case study of the role of technology in supporting organisational change in higher education. Many of the levers of engagement are evident in other Australian universities.<br /

Exploring the Rationale of Performance Based Funding for Malaysian Public Universities

The intention of this paper is to discuss the rationale for Malaysian public universities to implement Performance Based Funding (PBF) mechanism. Here, the funding mechanisms are systems based on allocating a proportion of education budgets relative to specific performance measures such as course completion, credit attainment, and degree completion, instead of allocating funding entirely based on enrolment alone. The implementation of PBF mechanisms has recently become a topic of heated debate in the education sector worldwide which has also increased the interest of researchers and policymakers to work on it. Since almost no study has looked into the applicability of PBF in Malaysia with the aims to contribute knowledge and fill the gap in the current research. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to answer the objective of this study. The positive functions of qualitative research methodology are to show that it can assist the researcher in obtaining in-depth information and to understand the subjective experience of the respondents. Thus, in this procedure, semi-structured interviews were adopted and targeted to obtain information regarding the applicability of the PBF mechanism from the budgeting and financial aspects. Participants who encompassed in semi-structured interviews were the senior officer from the Bursar Office of selected universities. The findings from the qualitative data showed that PBF mechanism is suitable to be implemented at Malaysian public universities. However, there were several issues that the government needs to be addressed before the PBF mechanism can be successfully implemented

Calmodulation meta-analysis: Predicting calmodulin binding via canonical motif clustering

The calcium-binding protein calmodulin (CaM) directly binds to membrane transport proteins to modulate their function in response to changes in intracellular calcium concentrations. Because CaM recognizes and binds to a wide variety of target sequences, identifying CaM-binding sites is difficult, requiring intensive sequence gazing and extensive biochemical analysis. Here, we describe a straightforward computational script that rapidly identifies canonical CaM-binding motifs within an amino acid sequence. Analysis of the target sequences from high resolution CaM-peptide structures using this script revealed that CaM often binds to sequences that have multiple overlapping canonical CaM-binding motifs. The addition of a positive charge discriminator to this meta-analysis resulted in a tool that identifies potential CaM-binding domains within a given sequence. To allow users to search for CaM-binding motifs within a protein of interest, perform the meta-analysis, and then compare the results to target peptide-CaM structures deposited in the Protein Data Bank, we created a website and online database. The availability of these tools and analyses will facilitate the design of CaM-related studies of ion channels and membrane transport proteins