Staff development at RMIT: Bottom‐up work serviced by top‐down investment and policy

Effective staff development is the weaving together of many strands. We need to support staff in their current work, while providing them with ideas, incentives and resources to look for new ways to design learning environments which will enhance student learning. Staff development must be combined with specific projects where change is occurring. Ideas are not hard to find Incentives and resources are another matter. The paper will outline some general principles for effective staff development. These principles will be applied in the description of the substantial investment RMIT has made in order to realize our teaching and learning policy. We have a model of ‘grass‐roots’ faculty‐based work funded by large‐scale corporate ‘investment’. ‘Bottom‐up’ meets ‘top‐down’

SoTL at Cultural Interfaces:Exploring Nuance in Learning Designs at a Chinese University

This essay contains my reflections of working in a number of teaching and learning projects in the last decade at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Our research confirms that the principles that inform scholarly teaching and learning, that are generally considered universal, also apply in a Hong Kong Chinese context. However, the implementation of those principles is subtly different. It is the nuance in the details about how these principles are enacted in practice that I will explore by considering how the concept of ‘face’ plays out in designing for learning and looking for evidence that such designs are effective

Pragmatic meta analytic studies: learning the lessons from naturalistic evaluations of multiple cases

This paper explores the concept of pragmatic meta‐analytic studies in eLearning. Much educational technology literature focuses on developers and teachers describing and reflecting on their experiences. Few connections are made between these experiential ‘stories’. The data set is fragmented and offers few generalisable lessons. The field needs guidelines about what can be learnt from such single‐case reports. The pragmatic meta‐analytic studies described in this paper have two common aspects: (1) the cases are related in some way, and (2) the data are authentic, that is, the evaluations have followed a naturalistic approach. We suggest that examining a number of such cases is best done by a mixed‐methods approach with an emphasis on qualitative strategies. In the paper, we overview 63 eLearning cases. Three main meta‐analytic strategies were used: (1) meta‐analysis of the perception of usefulness across all cases, (2) meta‐analysis of recorded benefits and challenges across all cases, and (3) meta‐analysis of smaller groups of cases where the learning design and/or use of technology are similar. This study indicated that in Hong Kong the basic and non‐interactive eLearning strategies are often valued by students, while their perceptions of interactive strategies that are potentially more beneficial fluctuate. One possible explanation relates to the level of risk that teachers and students are willing to take in venturing into more innovative teaching and learning strategies

Using Wordle as a Supplementary Research Tool

A word cloud is a special visualization of text in which the more frequently used words are effectively highlighted by occupying more prominence in the representation. We have used Wordle to produce word-cloud analyses of the spoken and written responses of informants in two research projects. The product demonstrates a fast and visually rich way to enable researchers to have some basic understanding of the data at hand. Word clouds can be a useful tool for preliminary analysis and for validation of previous findings. However, Wordle is an adjunct tool and we do not recommend that this method be used as a stand-alone research tool comparable to traditional content analysis methods

Environmental education: The development of a curriculum through 'grass roots' reconstructive action

The case study reported in this paper started as a research and development initiative to improve environmental education and ecology fieldwork activities. A package of resource materials and activities was developed and pilot tested with teachers. Despite highly commended workshops, however, follow-up evaluation revealed that the curriculum packages were not widely used. The paper discusses a two year action research investigation of conceptual, evaluation and adoption tensions that led to a revised approach to environmental education and curriculum innovation. The rational and centre-to-periphery orientation of the initial research and development project was replaced by a teacher support network to facilitate 'grass roots' reconstructive action. This orientation was then investigated with two groups of science teachers in rural schools. The study revealed how external support services and a sustained dialogue around the prevailing science curriculum, local environmental issues and everyday classroom activities fostered reconstructive change at a local level. The transition from an external and rational strategy of curriculum development to a networking service in support of local reconstructive action is described. Some of the emerging management and design considerations for a revised political economy (policy and action framework) of environmental education curriculum change are discussed

Participatory evaluation: The case of the natal primary science project of the urban foundation

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Teachers’ beliefs and practices when teaching life sciences using their second language

African township schools are characterised by cultural and linguistic diversity, hence, teachers have the dual task of ensuring that learners grasp scientific concepts, while also catering for the diversity in the learners’ backgrounds. The study reported on here was aimed at investigating teachers’ beliefs and practices in teaching life sciences using English, a language that is not their own home language. The study was underpinned by a socio-constructivist perspective, emphasising how one’s personal context, including prior experiences, influences the development of beliefs about language use in life sciences classes and the manner in which teaching and learning might occur. The sample comprised 6 teachers who all spoke English as a second language. We collected the data using structured interviews to ascertain the teachers’ beliefs about the teaching of life sciences in English to Grade 11 classes, and classroom observations to identify their classroom practices. The findings indicate that the beliefs that the teachers expressed differed from their actual choices and practices in the lessons observed

Teaching biochemistry differently: collaborative peer group activities in large classes

Traditional university teaching of undergraduate biochemistry is generally delivered in lectures and laboratory classes. Online teaching environments have recently enabled different approaches to content delivery and assessment. By developing an online repository of content (lecture notes, exercises, formative and summative assessment), the academic can now construct new teaching and learning methodologies and experiences for the student, since formal lecture time can be reduced and replaced by other learning activities that promote active student involvement. We have designed and implemented a new teaching and learning initiative for second year Biochemistry involving collaborative learning in Peer Groups (Dobos, Grinpukel, Rumble and McNaught 1999; Dobos 2001). In this program, students are engaged in structured discussions, problem solving and concept mapping exercises, and seminar preparation, in a collaborative group setting. Additional sharing of ideas occurs through student-generated materials, Web Board online asynchronous discussions and group seminars. The Peer Groups are facilitated and managed by the students. The Peer Group program enables the students to actively engage in a discourse on biochemical concepts and adopt different approaches to learning. Furthermore, through participation and practice, the students are improving their communication and teamwork skills necessary in the workforce. In this paper we report on further developments of the program in response to student feedback, and its implementation in large classes. Our findings indicate that the group activities need to be carefully designed and structured, and closely aligned to the other learning activities of the curriculum, in order to provide maximum benefit to the students. The timetabling of classes, institutional infrastructure and student resources are critical to the efficacy of the program and the learning experience of the student