The Minister for Education, the Hon Christopher Pyne MP, has announced the successful recipients of OLT fellowships for 2014.  Further details are available at: http://www.olt.gov.au/fellowships

Edith Cowan University, Joondalup Campus, Perth.

Seminar/ Workshop at 8.201B Centre for Learning & Development Collaborative Space, Tuesday 26^th November, 10 – 12midday

Professor Sue Bloxham (U Cumbria, UK): What does research tell us about the relationship between commonly used assessment practices and academic standards in higher education?

Do our policies and practices for assuring standards (e.g. criteria, rubrics, benchmark statements, moderation, external review) facilitate consistent and reliable grading of student work?  This seminar will present recent research on marking judgements and university teachers’ use of academic standards in higher education. It will draw on both empirical data and theoretical approaches to examine the extent to which there is a mismatch between the claims about quality assurance of higher education assessment and the everyday practice of academics making decisions about student achievement.  The seminar will be an opportunity to discuss aspects such as the conflict between

• documented and tacit knowledge of standards,
• norm referenced grading,
• analytical grading
• holistic judgement processes and
• the existence of a broad or local consensus on standards.

The seminar will conclude by discussing alternative, better matched, approaches to safeguarding standards in the assessment of complex work drawing upon both UK and Australian examples.

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Professor Bloxham is Director of Education Research and Professor of Academic Practice at the University of Cumbria, UK.  In 2007, she was awarded a UK National Teaching Fellowship.  She has developed a particular interest in understanding and enhancing assessment in the higher education context.  Her interest has focused on how we manage our higher education assessment, particularly task design, guidance and feedback, to support the achievement of students from under-represented groups, and her work has inspired research into how tutors recognise quality in their marking.  Sue has taught in higher education for over twenty years, followed by ten years’ experience in educational development including responsibility for a large education development centre. She has published widely in the field, including the best-selling Developing Effective Assessment in Higher Education (Open University Press) with Pete Boyd in 2007. Her current ventures include a research project on the use of academic standards by academics funded by the UK Higher Education Academy and Quality Assurance Agency, contributing to the Assessment chapter of the new UK Quality Code for Higher Education, and involvement in the UK HEA Transforming Assessment Programme.

Free registration.  Please RSVP to Dr Ken Robinson, CLD [email protected]  

HERDSA and OLT proudly present

Professor David Boud

Two events at Curtin University on Friday 18 October 2013

David Boud is Professor of Adult Education in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Technology Sydney. He has published extensively on teaching, learning and assessment in higher and professional education in the international literature. He has held the positions of Dean of the University Graduate School, Head of the School of Adult and Language Education and Associate Dean (Research and Development) in the Faculty of Education. In the area of assessment in higher education he has been a pioneer in developing learning-centred approaches to assessment across the disciplines, particularly in student self-assessment (Enhancing Learning through Self Assessment, Routledge 1995) and building assessment skills for long-term learning (Rethinking Assessment in Higher Education: Learning for the Longer Term, Routledge, 2007). His new book with Liz Molloy and others, Feedback in Higher and Professional Education (Routledge) was published earlier this year. He is an Australian Learning and Teaching Council Senior Fellow and focused on 'Student assessment for learning in and after courses’, which led to Assessment 2020: Seven Propositions for Assessment Reform in Higher Education. See www.assessmentfutures.com

WORKSHOP    Friday 18 October      9.00am – 12.00pm     Building 400, Room 303, Curtin University

 Feedback: why have we got it so wrong? Ensuring feedback processes lead to learning.

 There is an almost universal consensus in university student surveys in Australia as well as other countries, that feedback is a major problem. Considerable effort by many different institutions has led to little change in students’ views. This leads to the suspicion that the solution may not simply be doing better what we presently think of feedback (being more timely, having more informative comments, etc.), but rethinking what we mean by feedback and how it fits in our courses. The premise of this workshop is that feedback needs to have a discernible influence on student learning, otherwise why make the effort? It will draw on the considerable body of very recent research on feedback in higher education to focus on what most makes a difference. It will also focus on some conventional activities commonly called feedback that we can usefully stop doing because they are not a good use of our time. The workshop is aimed at all those who make comments about students’ work who wonder if they could be spending their time more effectively. It is not suited for those employed to mark student work who have no control over what they do.

 Register at https://davidboudworkshop.eventbrite.com/

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 FORUM           Friday 18 October      2.00pm – 4.00pm       Building 300 Room 220, Curtin University

 How can we avoid assessment destroying the very learning we are trying to promote?

This event is an open discussion around the theme of having assessment contribute more effectively to student learning. It is premised on the assumption that the assessment of learning is not the same as assessment for learning. It will commence with a short provocation to focus the issues followed by an opportunity for participants to offer examples, raise questions, and explore issues.

Register at https://davidboudforum.eventbrite.com/

This seminar will disseminate the findings of the Historical Thinking Extension Grant.

This project embraced several objectives. The key element in the first phase was structuring the History curriculum in a way which scaffolds the development of Threshold Learning Outcomes (TLOs), with a particular focus on developing skills in the use of primary sources. The next phase focused on developing assessments which support the TLOs and which demonstrate their mastery by students over a three-year undergraduate course.

The Project Leaders, Michael Sturma and James Trotter, from the School of Arts, have worked with Murdoch history staff over a series of 6 seminars. In addition, the project hosted several seminars from two interstate academics: Associate Professor Jennifer Clark from the University of New England, and Professor Jill Roe, Professor Emerita at Macquarie University. 

Date: Friday 16 August, 2.30-3.30pm, followed by wine and cheese and an opportunity to network with colleagues. 

Venue: FTLR 4th floor North Wing Library, 4.040, Murdoch University

http://maps.murdoch.edu.au/

This event is open to academic staff from cognate disciplines at all WA universities, as well as being suitable for staff interested in curriculum renewal or OLT Extension Grants.

Please rsvp to Denyse [email protected]

The Asia Pacific Forum on Education Integrity (APFEI) is pleased to announce its academic staff award for 2013.

APFEI promotes and supports the highest standards of integrity in education and acknowledges the individual efforts of staff who champion academic integrity and take on actions that contribute to the transformation of their educational institutions.

The teaching award is a marvellous opportunity to acknowledge your colleagues who put into practice ideas and innovations.

APFEI invites you to nominate colleagues who have fostered academic integrity by:

•developing resources

•developing policy

•taking action

•changing practices

•introducing and developing practices, or

•engaging others.

The award will be presented at:

6th Asia-Pacific Conference on Educational Integrity (6APCEI) Wednesday 2 - Friday 4, October 2013  Macquarie University, Sydney Australia

For nomination details, guidelines, award criteria and application forms, go to www.apfei.edu.au/award 

Nominations close: 31st August 2013

Contact: Julianne East [email protected]

On 11th June 2013, WAND held a workshop at Curtin University for staff at WA Universities considering applying for a teaching award. This panel discussion is available on You Tube through the links below.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Here is a link to the recording of the presentation by Associate Professor Betty Leask from the University of South Australia. The topic was "Internationalisation of the curriculum in theory and practice". Presentation Thursday 6 June 2013 at UWA.

http://prod.lcs.uwa.edu.au:8080/ess/echo/presentation/f0cbd74d-5283-45fe-a9a4-3ce8f1ba60a4

Date: Thursday 11 April 2013
Time: 10am – 1pm
Venue: Watersports Complex, UWA Crawley Campus

This seminar will present the results of an ALTC/OLT-funded project into the workload implications of blended and online teaching.

The research was conducted at CQU, USQ, UNE and ACU, and involved interviews with 88 staff, reporting on their perceptions of the disparity between workload allocations for teaching, and the actual 'lived reality' of the additional work, and changes in teaching tasks and activities, consequent on greater use of Learning Management Systems and student expectations of a 24/7 'service' education. Staff believed they were generally working 'out of hours' to meet these expectations, and that current workload models no longer reflected the increased complexity of e-teaching.

Presenter: Professor Yoni Ryan, Adjunct Professor of Higher Education at QUT.

Following the presentation, participants will be able to discuss their own institutional workload model, and suggest ways to take the findings forward to institutions and the sector.

RSVP: [email protected] by Thursday 4 April 2013.

This presentation is an activity of the OLT Extension Grant Historical Thinking: Curriculum renewal at Murdoch.  Historians from WA universities are invited to attend.

Associate Professor Jennifer Clark

Jennifer is the Academic Director of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at the University of New England. Her current interests in teaching and learning relate to standards and their application to the development of best practice. Jennifer was on the project team for After Standards: The Future of History. She is currently a co-recipient of an OLT Grant titled Renewing First Year Curricula for Social Sciences and Humanities in the Context of Discipline Threshold Standards.

Venue: The Nash Room, Club Murdoch, Murdoch University

To RSVP email Denyse, [email protected]

Please join us for a seminar and interactive session with international academic integrity expert Dr Tricia Bertram Gallant from the University of California, San Diego about the OLT strategic commissioned project on academic integrity:

Embedding and extending exemplary academic integrity policy and support frameworks across the higher education sector

When:  05 March 2013, 9:15 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.

Where:    University of Western Australia, Watersports Complex, Cnr Mounts Bay Road and Hackett Drive, Crawley                                                                              

 RSVP:  By Friday 22 February 2013 by email to the Centre for the Advancement of Teaching & Learning ([email protected]).