Authentic conditions for authentic assessment: aligning task and assessment

Despite major discussion and consideration of authentic assessment through the 1990s, little progress appears to have been made towards its widespread adoption in higher education. Universities often serve to limit the use of authentic approaches in learning tasks and assessment, through restrictive policies. In this paper, we briefly review the literature and summarise the characteristic elements of authentic assessment, and argue that task, assessment and university policies must be aligned for truly effective use of authentic assessment to occur in higher education

Planning Methods for a Sustainable Future

Today, climate change, pollution, poor health, and economic crisis pose a threat to Earth and its inhabitants. If these global threats are left unmitigated, serious economic, environmental, and social consequences will occur. Earth’s future currently rests in the hands of urban planners and policy makers. It is their responsibility to develop and implement methods that ensure a sustainable future. Sustainability is defined as meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. The current effort to achieve global sustainability needs to be improved as conditions continue to decline. Urban planners and policy makers, at all levels of government, from jurisdictions around the globe, need to share their innovative, sustainable planning methods with one another. Their combined effort will help humans and the environment better cope with existing threats and protect the planet from irreversible damage

Quality guidelines for online courses: the development of an instrument to audit online units

Institutional, national and global pressures demand that universities address issues of quality in teaching and learning. The maintenance of existing courses and the imperative to offer new courses online necessitates the development of measures and guidelines that can inform instructional designers and academics. A number of quality guidelines have been produced that reflect different contexts and purposes. Some focus on school learning, some on pedagogy alone and some that reflect the designs of particular courseware management software. This paper sets out to describe a workable set of guidelines for academic and support staff in the development and benchmarking of online course quality across the institution that emphasised current approaches to teaching and learning in higher education supported by appropriate content and delivery strategies

Teachers\u27 perceptions of online modules to promote professional learning of ICT

Online professional learning has the potential to be a cost effective, flexible approach that can reach large numbers of teachers. However, there are many factors that need to be evaluated in developing successful online approaches that impact on teaching pedagogy and student learning. This paper outlines one phase of a research study conducted on behalf of an Australian state-based Department of Education to evaluate the transfer of professional learning from online modules about the integration of ICT to the practices of K-12 classroom teachers

The BEST approaches to online mentoring

The beginning year of teaching is arguably a critical year for determining the longevity and success of a teachers career, and the one that would most benefit from induction and mentoring. This paper describes the design and development of a theoretically based, generic website template for online communities of practice for beginning teachers that provides independent and experienced mentoring support. It includes a rich range of resources that are automatically updated, and links to professional websites and other relevant sources of support. The paper illustrates and compares the ways in which the online resource can be used as a model to meet the professional needs of different cohorts of beginning and experienced practitioners, using different models of mentoring suited to various levels of funding and professional support

Engaging students with learning technologies

Curtin University initiated its eScholar program in 2009 making funds available for academic staff to implement innovative teaching using Curtin’s extensive suite of learning technologies. The program is based on the philosophy of engaging students with learning technologies that support their growing understanding through authentic and assessable activities.This publication presents the research findings of each of the eScholar projects conducted in 2010 and 2011. Each chapter has undergone a process of double-blind review resulting in high quality descriptions of learning using current and emerging technologies. The publication is divided into 6 sections based on these technologies.University teaching and learning is faced with many challenges. A major one is recognising appropriate learning technologies and their use that support ways in which adults learn. Rapid advances in technologies can easily seduce those with limited understanding of adult learning. This publication offers clear directions founded on teacher and learner experiences grounded in real classroom activity

Literacy practitioners’ perspectives on adult learning needs and technology approaches in Indigenous communities

Current reports of literacy rates in Australia indicate an ongoing gap in literacy skills between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian adults, at a time when the literacy demands of work and life are increasing. There are many perspectives on what are the literacy needs of Indigenous adults,from the perspectives of community members themselves to the relatively under-researched perspective of literacy practitioners. This paper provides the insights, experiences and recommendations from adult literacy practitioners who work with adult Indigenous learners in communities across Australia. Focus group interviews, using an online synchronous platform, were used to elicit views about the literacy needs of Indigenous adults in communities and the successes in and barriers to meeting those needs. The practitioners also shared their views on the use of technology in literacy learning. Together, these views can informfuture directions in curriculum design and teaching approaches for community-based Indigenous adult literacy education

The ideal teacher: A curriculum framework for teachers of primary mathematics

This paper suggests a curriculum framework for training prospective primary teachers of mathematics. Such a framework needs to be viewed in the context of the skills and understandings that are reflected in successful mathematics teachers

An international survey of mature students' uses of mobile devices in life and learning

The paper presents research concerned with learner-driven innovative practice with mobile technologies and the interface between formal and informal learning. We build on our previous work investigating student use of personal devices for learning, work, social interaction and entertainment. A recent phase of the research included an international survey focusing on students registered on selected Masters and doctoral programmes in the UK, Sweden, Portugal, Hong Kong and Australia. The research gives an account of everyday uses and more unusual deployments of personal technologies by students from departments of education and technology. It illuminates learner choices and preferences, attitudes towards work–life boundaries, evolving social and cultural practices, and the impacts of technological change

A scholarship program for academic staff to develop exemplary online learning tasks

There is a strong impetus for blended learning approaches to be more widely adopted in higher education but finding an effective model for professional development of teaching staff can be problematic. In 2009, Curtin University developed an eTeaching and Learning Scholarship program for academic staff to develop exemplary online learning tasks that could be shared with the university community and inform future online teaching within their disciplines. This paper describes the design of the professional learning program together with early encouraging results that indicate both the willingness of the eScholars to incorporate additional learning technologies to extend the affordances of the university provisioned systems and to embrace authentic learner-centred tasks