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Programme Descriptions


Associate Professor Kerry Dunne was Head of School(1998 - 2001; June - August of 2004), as Convenor of German (2004-2006), was responsible for the introduction and ongoing management of the collaborative blended model programs, and will resume these roles on returning from study leave mid 2007. She successfully applied for funds from the HEIP and Carrick Institute to further the project. An article on the program is under review while a second article on students’ response to the online component of the course is in preparation.

The Program 

The UNE collaborative blended model was developed in response to changes in staffing levels in German at the University of Newcastle in 2004 which meant that there would in all likelihood be only one full time member of staff remaining in German. The initial plan was to support the remaining staff member by delivering a significant proportion of the program, thus making possible a reasonable workload and study leave. However, the plan was refocussed when the staff member concerned moved into a cognate discipline, and in 2005 UNE commenced delivery of a full program of 8 articulated language courses. German was introduced to James Cook University using the collaborative blended model in 2006, and Chinese, Italian and French in 2007.

In the UNE collaborative blended model, students remain enrolled at their home university—they are not cross-institutionally enrolled—so that the partner university retains load. UNE delivers the course which consists of a mixture of print based teaching materials, on-campus tutorials and an online component. Students interact via WebCT with the larger cohort of students including UNE’s internal and external students and blended tuition students at other universities. UNE is paid a fee for service per student (Kerry Dunne, 2006).

Online testing and assessment items were developed using funds from a Higher Education Innovations Program grant and a second grant from the Carrick Institute is funding the development of podcasts to deliver an interactive web-based language curriculum with embedded learning strategies.

Dunne, K. (2004-2005). Cross institutional rationalisation of language teaching: Provision of German at the University of Newcastle by UNE Higher Education Innovations Program Grant.
Dunne, K. (2006). Delivering subject choice and quality assurance in specialised disciplines: The University of New England's model of subject delivery at the University of Newcastle. Under review.
Dunne, K (2007-2008) Innovation with Quality Assurance: Online curriculum development for the University of New England’s multi-institutional collaborative programs in German at UNE, James Cook and Newcastle Universities Carrick Competitive Grant.
Dunne, K (2007) Lessons learnt: Student response to an online environment (in preparation)

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Erica Jobling, University of Sydney,  (Biostats)
Biography: Erica has run the BCA Coordinating Office (a central office based in based at the NHMRC Clinical Trials Centre in Sydney) since the first intake of BCA students in 2001.
Under the collegial jurisdiction of a Steering Committee, and with the help of a part time assistant, Erica oversees all aspects of the BCA’s administration and planning, including governance, university liaison, student and coordinator administration, curriculum development and delivery, quality assurance, marketing and promotion, and strategic planning.

The BCA has a Steering Committee, a Teaching Committee, and an Advisory Board, with core members from all participating universities. Steering Committee and Advisory Board members from industry, state and Australian government health departments and professional organisations provide advice on workforce issues.

Programme
Biostatistics Collaboration of Australia
BCA OUTLINE

The Biostatistics Collaboration of Australia (BCA) is a consortium of Australian universities that jointly offer a postgraduate coursework program in biostatistics, delivered by distance means, for careers in industry and research, and in service to public health and community medicine. It was established to address a serious shortage of statisticians in the health and medical sectors in Australia and internationally.
The BCA opened its door to students in 2001, with an intake of 15 students. In semester 1, 2007, there are around 230 students actively enrolled in units of study within the program.
The consortium has received development funding from the Australian Department of Health and Ageing (DoHA) and some support from the pharmaceutical industry.

What is biostatistics?
Biostatistics is the discipline that underpins the use of statistical methods in health and medical research. Its foundation is the mathematics of variability and it encompasses the science of designing quantitative research studies and other data collections, managing and analysing data, and interpreting the results.

A national consortium
The education model gives scope for the best talents from around the country to collaborate, to develop a focused program with a mission to meet workforce needs by providing Australia with well trained professional biostatisticians.
Participating in the consortium are The University of Sydney, The University of Queensland, The University of Melbourne, The University of Newcastle, Macquarie University, Monash University, The University of Adelaide and the Australian National University. The BCA coordinating office is based at the NHMRC Clinical Trials Centre at the University of Sydney.
The rationale for the establishment of the BCA was that despite an identified shortage of professionally trained biostatisticians there was not a sufficient critical mass of expertise in one university, nor a likelihood of viable enrolment numbers, to make it feasible to develop a high-quality program at any one institution. The BCA model involves partner universities fully recognising units taught by other member universities.

Specialist versus generalist emphasis
The program has been designed to fill a serious gap between current programs in public health and epidemiology (which train users of biostatistical methods, not professional biostatisticians), and general statistics courses (which do not cater to the increasingly diverse and specialised needs of health research). It incorporates an explicit recognition that a particular area of specialist capacity was in short supply.

What the BCA offers

  • Consortium model is pioneering: driven by workforce end-users (industry and research); top universities pooling expertise; capacity building driven (key members have collaborated by commitment, not imposition); quality assurance is embedded
  • Co-operation, rather than competition, between universities is required for the development of high-quality, tailored programs
  • Part-time distance education is provides flexibility for busy working professionals
  • Opportunities for people wanting to enhance or change careers

Demographic is in 2 major streams:

  • People coming from a health background
  • People whose backgrounds are in mathematics and/or statistic

High end curriculum provides a competitive advantage for career opportunities in industry, health professions, government
  • Cutting edge science – Biostatistics is a growing area - essential underpinning in health and medical research  
  • Program is up to date and geared to health workforce needs and emerging national priorities
  • Success indicators proved by external reviews 
  • Optimum capacity building - as skill levels increase, so does an appreciation of the importance of biostatistical expertise in a wide spectrum of health research and health services  
Skills-based capacity building in industry:
  • growth in the supply of a large pool of talented mathematical science graduates
  • facilitating continued improvements in attractiveness of investment environment to drive increases in foreign and local investment

Future strategic challenges include:

Creating a sustainable program by:
  • ensuring that the program meets workforce needs in Australia;
  • monitoring the national and international market;
  • securing ongoing funding;
  • increasing student numbers;
  • developing, supporting and maintaining high quality staff within BCA universities;
  • engineering collaboration and funds so that universities' strategic goals and self interest are aligned with the goals of the consortium, eg. they get more students through collaboration than competition.
  • increasing awareness of biostatistics as a key profession in health and medicine.

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AMSI: Bill Blyth
Biography: Bill Blyth is Associate Professor of computational mathematics at RMIT University and was Head of the Department of Mathematics for 6.5 years. He is Chair of the Engineering Mathematics Group of Australia, a Center Affiliate at the International Centre for Classroom Research (at the University of Melbourne) and national coordinator of the ICE-EM’s Access Grid Room project.
His PhD was in theoretical physics at Imperial College, London. He has an unusually broad range of research interests in mathematics education (in technology rich classrooms) and the numerical solution of differential and integral equations. He has published more than 50 refereed papers.

Programme: Advanced courses in mathematical sciences have often had small class sizes. With a few exceptions, Honours courses have typically run with a handful of students and have sometimes been offered as “reading courses”. The lack of topic choice and flexibility for students has been a concern. To address these problems and to ensure that Honours and postgraduate students are actively part of a wider community of practice, two programs have been implemented by The International Centre of Excellence for Education in Mathematics (ICE-EM) and the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute (AMSI). The ICE-EM was established in 2004 by AMSI (with a grant from the commonwealth government).

The first program: Summer Schools. AMSI has run Postgraduate Summer Schools since 2003 funded initially by DEST and since then by AMSI. The aim of the Summer Schools is to offer to students a range of courses in the mathematical sciences, some of which may not be normally available in their home institutions. The length of a Summer School is 4 or 5 weeks, and courses are normally 14 or 28 hours.
With the approval of their home university, students can take courses for credit toward their Honours degree. The courses are also open to postgraduate students (including research degree students) from cognate areas who wish to extend their knowledge of appropriate areas of mathematics and statistics. They have proven to be of interest to students from Engineering, Biomedical Science, and Commerce (Finance, Risk Management and other quantitative areas), among others.
There are strong protocols in place and assessment moderation for courses taken for credit.

The second program: Access Grid Rooms … multi-nodal remote collaboration. Access Grid Rooms, AGRs, have been well established and widely used for collaborative research. Up until now, the national and international focus on the use of AGRs has been to support research by the provision of remote visualization, interactive applications and the utilization of the high-bandwidth environment for distributed research, virtual meetings and events. ICE-EM is coordinating and partially funding the introduction of a national network of Access Grid Rooms located in the schools and departments of mathematics at AMSI member universities. ICE-EM’s goal is to create a network of AGRs designed to enhance teaching and research in the mathematical sciences throughout Australia.

By mid 2007, there will be 14 AGRs operating in mathematics precincts at the following AMSI member universities: La Trobe University, RMIT University, the University of South Australia, the University of Wollongong, Victoria University, Monash University, the University of Southern Queensland, the University of Sydney, the University of Newcastle, Macquarie University in conjunction with the CMIS Division of CSIRO, University of Technology, Sydney, University of Adelaide, Australian National University and University of Melbourne in conjunction with AMSI.  This does not include outcomes from the current and final round of applications for funding.  In addition there are at least 20 Access grid nodes in Australia, some of which could be used by mathematical sciences departments.   

The first three mathematical sciences departments with AGRs ran a pilot program in semester two of 2006: collaboratively teaching Honours mathematics and statistics courses. During 2007, as the AGRs become operational, everyone of the AMSI member universities is engaged with this national collaborative teaching program that is coordinated by the ICE-EM. As with the summer schools, students (with the approval of their home university) take courses for credit toward their Honours degree.

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Trish Andrews Mining Collaboration
Biography: Trish Andrews is currently employed as a lecturer in Higher Education at the University of Queensland and is seconded half time to the Mining Education Australia (MEA) project. Trish a long involvement with educational innovation, design, development and evaluation.  and extensive project management experience. She has received  several internal and external development and research grants including co-participant in a national Collaboration and Structural Reform (CASR) grant ($1.3million) for 2007-2008. Trish’s current projects  include exploring the  use of  technology to support collaborative teaching and learning in cross –institutional  settings and evaluating lecturers and students use and practice of innovative learning environments.

Programme
The Australian minerals industry is a key Australian industry contributing to the economic prosperity and high standard of living Australian’s have come to enjoy and expect. For the minerals industry to continue to provide social and economic benefits for the nation, the higher education system must be capable of, and committed to, providing high quality professional staff that the industry needs to compete globally and to maintain its social licence to operate.
In October 1999 the Minerals Council of Australia (MCA) established the Minerals Tertiary Education Council (MTEC) to build a world-class tertiary learning environment for the education of professionals for the Australian minerals industry.  This action was industry’s response to the 1998 discussion paper “Back from the Brink”  that dealt with the crisis in the supply of well-qualified professionals for the minerals industry.
Since 1999, this crisis has deepened despite greater engagement by the minerals industry in the education process. 
To address this problem, MTEC has been working with Curtin University of Technology (Western Australian School of Mines), The University of New South Wales (School of Mining Engineering) and The University of Queensland (Faculty of Engineering – Discipline of Mining Engineering and Minerals Process Engineering) to establish a national, collaborative mining education school called Mining Education Australia (MEA).
Restructuring mining education into the MEA Program has created the opportunity to design a world-class curriculum which can be taught across the three campuses; into Associate universities elsewhere in Australia; and externally to students located in regional and remote parts of Australia, or elsewhere in the world.

The MEA venture represents a major innovation in the Australian higher education context. Collaboration at all levels is central to the success of this project. The real potential of the MEA initiative lies in being able to realise the full educational potential of a truly collaborative teaching and learning environment where academic staff collaborate to develop curriculum and teaching is shared across institutions; alternative and innovative delivery and learning methods are implemented; and there is a greatly expanded collaborative student experience between each participating node, including potential for remote site located students to also engage with the Program.

 The collaborative aspects of the MEA project include:

  • A joint venture agreement between the three partner universities
  • A program leaders group representing the three universities and overseeing curriculum development activities
  • Collaborative course development activities
  • Assessment criteria, guidelines and procedures
  • Collaborative evaluation processes
  • Moderation processes
  • Industry university collaborations on particular courses
  • Collaborative teaching and learning activities
  • Use of technological solutions to support collaborative teaching and learning activities
  • A solution to cross-institutional enrolment issues
  • A digital repository for all MEA materials
  • A common look and feel for MEA resources and materials

To date the project is progressing well and the first courses have been rolled out for semester 1/2007. Key reasons for success:
  • Good leadership
  • Good will
  • Well structured project with regular get togethers for all project team
  • Ongoing staff development activities
  • Collaborative activities at all levels of the development processes
  • Technological support
  • Adequate funding

However, as in all ventures of this nature the project has encountered a number of issues that require resolution, including:
  • The need to create new processes and procedures to accommodate such a venture
  • Resistance to a new teaching and learning environment
  • Challenges in working in a new teaching and learning environment
  • Resource issues
  • Technology issues
  • Appropriate use of course development budgets
  • Keeping the collaborative momentum going
  • Workload issues

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Jen Webb and Donna Lee Brien 'Australian Writing Programs Network'
Biography: Associate Professor Jen Webb, University of Canberra

Associate Professor Jen Webb is Director of Communication Research at the University of Canberra, and teaches creative writing and cultural studies. Her background includes art house and academic publishing, and researching, writing and teaching in communication and culture. Her recent publications include Reading the Visual (Sage, UK, and Allen&Unwin, Sydney, 2004) and the collection of short fiction, Ways of Getting By (Ginninderra Press, Canberra, 2006). She is currently working on two research projects supported by ARC grants - Urban Imaginaries, and Art and Human Rights in the Asia-Pacific Region.


Dr Donna Lee Brien, University of New England

Dr Donna Lee Brien is a Senior Lecturer in Writing, Editing and Publishing at the University of New England, Australia. Widely published in the areas of writing pedagogy and praxis, creative non-fiction and collaborative practice in the arts, Donna has an MA and PhD in Creative Writing. Her biography John Power 1881-1943 (Sydney: MCA, 1991) is the standard work on this expatriate artist and benefactor, and Donna is also the co-author of The Girl's Guide to Real Estate: How to Enjoy Investing in Property, 2002; and The Girl's Guide to Work and Life: How to Create the Life you Want, 2004 (both with Dr Tess Brady, Sydney: Allen & Unwin). Founding Editor of dotlit: The Online Journal of Creative Writing (2000-2004) and Assistant Editor of Imago: New Writing (1999-2003), Donna is an Associate Editor of New Writing: the International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing (UK) and on the Board of Readers for Writing Macao. She is the President of the Australian Association of Writing Programs.

Programme:
Summary of aims

  • To initiate a national postgraduate creative writing research and supervision network;
  • To promote a culture of collaboration across the creative writing higher education sector in Australia to reduce HDR student isolation and attrition and improve supervision quality;
  • To build a national and international research culture among postgraduate research students and their supervisors in creative writing;
  • To disseminate information about Australian creative writing higher degrees research, learning and teaching to potential students, early career supervisors, and the publishing community/industry;
  • To produce a sustainable and scaleable model for use by other creative arts and creative industries disciplines in Australia.

Background
Creative writing research higher degrees are comparatively new in Australia and overseas: just a decade ago very few universities offered creative doctorates, and only a handful offered creative writing research masters. The rapid growth since has offered many opportunities to universities and students, but has also resulted in various inconsistencies in curricula, supervisory relations and examination standards. As well, the small size of the writing programs and the sometimes considerable differences in their institutional location from university to university leads to students reporting a great sense of isolation and a lack of clear direction.

This project aims to ameliorate the difficulties and build on the strengths of creative writing higher degrees programs by developing a national network of teaching academics and research students in creative writing, and a forum through which to discuss and develop best-practice learning, teaching and practice. It will promote collaborations that involve pairs of students, supervisors and candidates, and provide mentorship for new supervisors, and supervisors new to creative writing research. It will also build, archive and make available a database of qualified supervisors and examiners who will be able to support other users.

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Dr. Josko Petkovic, Murdoch University, President, Australian Screen Production Education and Research Association, Murdoch University (Screen production)
Biography: Dr Josko Petkovic teaches screen production at Murdoch University. He is Director of the National Academy of Screen and Sound, co-founder of IM refereed e-journal and President of ASPERA . He has been an active filmmaker for over 30  years. During this time he has written, directed and produced a series of innovative films including Subjective/ Objective, A Look at Trails, Journey of Anticipation, Frame on Dreaming, Animal Locomotion: Muybridge, Letter to Eros and The Resurrection of the Barque Stefano. In addition to his personal academic work, Dr Petkovic takes an active role in teaching and curriculum initiatives and supervises many of the Academy’s postgraduate students.

Programme: In Western Australia, Murdoch University has become the focus for a cross-institutional collaboration of researchers in screen production which in turn has  given rise to the National Academy of Screen and Sound (NASS) Research Centre. We run intercampus forums, festivals, seminars and conferences with our colleagues from Curtin, ECU, Notre Dame and UWA as well as those from  the TAFE sector. This collaboration often takes place in the context of national and international forums such as the Australian International Documentary Conference (AIDC) and Revelations Perth International Film Festival.

In a wider context, the formation of NASS has been inspired by the collaboration which has given rise to the Australian Screen Production Education and Research Association (ASPERA) – peak body of all (19) film schools.  Our long term aim is for NASS to become an intercampus entity  and a research arm of ASPERA.

MODELS OF COLLABORATION:  Collaboration is already an essential core of most screen production activities. This is because screen production is first and foremost  a collaborative activity which frequently requires an army of workers such as: producers, directors, writers, cinematographers, editors, composers, set designers, performers, special effect artists, etc. In Western Australia, filmmakers already collaborate informally across institutional boundaries and across undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

HORIZONTAL COLLABORATION: Teaching of screen production, to a large extent, consists of teaching how to collaborate within  and ever increasing circles of complexities.
The screen text itself  arises from a co-existing or horizontal  “collaboration” of codes (image, sound performance etc) which communicate in a way that can best be described as operating on parallel  logic. When such “horizontal” collaboration of  people and codes works well, the filmic texts so produced begins to resemble a form of life that is full of potential for all kinds of experimentation in teaching and research. For this reason screen production collaboration intrinsically offers what is arguably one of the most powerful and innovative teaching and research methodology available to the humanities, arts and social sciences (HASS) sector today. In a world that is becoming ever more dependent on images, it is this collaborative type of methodology that will most likely provide the foundation for the strategically important digital content industry.

The power of this collaborative methodology  is already well recognized by our undergraduate and postgraduate  students who are now entering into this area of academia in ever greater numbers.

TO BE RESOLVED: There is an unhappy side to this developing story. Communicating, researching and experimenting with complex representational systems that rely on parallel logic such as screen production is something that conventional academia has not yet fully embraced even though much of our world revolves around production and reception of image-based texts.  

Historically, screen production texts have been categorized as “art” and image texts as “art” were generally excluded from, or found few opportunities for academic publication and research categories. Furthermore, the Australian Research Council (ARC) still principally declines to fund anything which involves producing “art” even when it is research based. They leave this to the Australian Council for the Arts. The Australian Council for the Arts in turn generally declines to fund anything that has to do with teaching and research at tertiary institutions as do, increasingly, the AFC and state film agencies. This institutional double bind has created a funding vacuum for screen producers which stand as an obstacles to more extensive collaborations that are possible among screen producers in Australia as well as putting at risk what is arguably one of the most productive teaching and research developments in the HASS sector.

Our foremost aim at the moment is to find a constructive resolution for this funding double bind. We are presently seeking contacts and collaborations with national and state regulatory bodies (most critically with ARC and DEST) and with all major  industry funding bodies (AFC, OzCo etc) to ensure that these bodies regulate for a proper recognition of image-based teaching and research within academia and in a way that removes all obstacle that stand in the way of greater collaborations among image makers.

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Dr Jill Borthwick  e-Grad School Australia (eGSA)
Jill is Project Manager, e-Grad School Australia (eGSA), a collaborative project with multiple online components supporting employability and commercialisation in the research training area http://www.egradschool.edu.au/.
The project is funded by DEST through its Collaboration and Structural Reform Fund and by the Australian Technology Network (ATN) of Universities: Curtin University of Technology, Queensland University of Technology, RMIT University, University of South Australia, and University of Technology Sydney.  More than 100 staff members drawn from these five universities are part of this collaboration; this level of involvement will continue when eGSA reaches full scale operation in June 2007. .  
Previously Jill was Project Director of the ATN’s Learning Employment Aptitudes Program (LEAP) which now forms part of the eGSA suite of research training offerings. She is co-author of a DEST funded study which includes an examination of this collaboration: Borthwick, J. and Wissler, R (2003) Postgraduate Research Students and Generic Capabilities: Online directions
http://www.dest.gov.au/archive/highered/respubs/postgrad_research/post_research.pdf

Contact:  j.borthwick@qut.edu.au

Rod Wissler is Professor of Drama and inaugural Dean of Graduate Studies at Queensland University of Technology, with a wide-ranging brief in connection with the development of QUT’s research culture and research outputs. His primary area of responsibility is postgraduate research policy and management.

As one part of his portfolio, over the last eight years he has taken a leading role in establishing collaborative activities in the ATN research education sector.  Over this period the collaboration has produced a suite of online resources with particular emphasis on the generic capabilities and commercialisation skills of research students, as well as on supervisor development.  The award of a Collaborative Structural Reform Fund grant in 2005 has led to further developments, including the launch this year of the Graduate Certificate in Commercialisation jointly offered by the five ATN universities.    
 

The ATN universities and the e-Grad School: Collaboration and ongoing expansion 2000-2007  

The e-Grad School (Australia) (eGSA) is a virtual graduate school that will operate in Australia and internationally from June 2007 to provide postgraduate students, their supervisors and universities with online access to resources and activities relevant to their needs.  The resources that eGSA is able to offer form an integral package for the benefit of this user base, whatever the university or location.  This includes a Graduate Certificate in Research Commercialisation that commenced at the beginning of 2007; it is jointly offered by the five universities in the Australian Technology Network (ATN).  

Inspection of the eGSA website http://www.egradschool.edu.au/  shows the range of offerings for different purposes and audiences available, with all of them being the product of close collaboration between the five ATN universities: Curtin University of Technology; Queensland University of Technology; RMIT University, University of South Australia and University of Technology Sydney.

While eGSA commenced in 2005, its story is one based on an ongoing expansion that began in 2000. What started as a collaboration within the ATN network has now moved forward to reach out to universities and other research organisations in Australian and internationally.  In its foundation period, the ATN Deans and Directors of Graduate Studies (DDoGS) set about building online resources that would increase the development of their research students' employment possibilities.  This led to the creation of the Learning Employment Aptitudes Program (LEAP). The DDoGs decided on the topics that should be addressed and then each university took responsibility for development of one module. Once these were developed and closely evaluated, research students could access the online modules from any of the five universities or their multiple campuses.  Enrolment in the moderated modules was, and continues to be, open on a no-fee basis to any ATN research student.    

The success of this collaboration and the modules produced could be seen in the increasing level of student take-up and the willingness to provide continuing support coming from all levels within the ATN. These circumstances led to the Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST) funding a study which included an examination of the factors that sustained the collaboration and that were enabling the provision of resources of demonstrable quality in an identified area of national priority. These factors and the issues that were resolved in creating the LEAP modules are described in http://www.dest.gov.au/archive/highered/respubs/postgrad_research/post_research.pdf
Given the level of user satisfaction and the identification of a further set of skills as needing to be addressed, the ATN DDoGS moved on to use the same collaborative model to develop a second set of modules.  This time research methodology and design skills were targeted in Modules on Research Education (MORE).

Other online approaches to benefit research students were being introduced across the Network and by individual universities; the vision of putting these together into a one-stop shop for research education led to the creation of the e-Grad School concept in 2005.  Subsequently DEST’s Collaboration and Structural Reform Fund awarded funding for a pilot study that would take eGSA into operation in a wider sphere, reaching beyond the original Network so as to benefit research students, supervisors, and research managers nationally and internationally. While this pilot study concludes at the end of May 2007, research students from non-ATN universities already are participating in eGSA activities and negotiations for further connection with the targeted user groups is underway.  Additions to the eGSA suite are in train, including the forthcoming Masters in Research Management for joint offering by the five ATN universities in 2008.  

Our contribution to the Carrick Forum on “Collaborating to offer small courses/subjects” is to look at the practices that have led to eGSA’s present situation and which will be applied to its future directions. This includes examining its underpinning model of collaboration and the issues that go with its set up and maintenance.   

Arguably there are a number of success factors that come into play in any collaborative endeavor; at the Forum we can reflect on what causes a collaboration of this scope to endure and grow to such dimensions over an extended period and also look to what lies ahead in the next phase of the ATN collaboration.    

Professor Rod Wissler, Project Director
Dr Jill Borthwick, Project Manager  

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Physics Collaboration

Chris Creagh is a lecturer in Physics at Murdoch University and has developed Physics and Educational units and workshops for students from primary to tertiary level. In August 2006 she was awarded a Premier’s Citation for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning. Her area of research is in Science Education as well as X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy.
She counts lecturing as her fourth career after Diagnostic Radiography, Mother and University Student (starting in her 36th year). Chris has lived in England and Canada as well as Australia. She is an artist and a scientist and brings a wealth of experiences with her to her teaching.

David Lamb is lecturer and Convenor of Physics & Electronics at The University of New England. Since commencing employment in 2002, he has supervised the academic reform of Physics at UNE and is committed to making Physics an essential  cross-disciplinary resource for both teaching and research across the university. He runs numerous externally-funded research projects in both photonics and precision agriculture, and is Project Leader for the Cooperative Research Centres for Spatial Science and Irrigation Futures.

Across Australia, Physics departments face increasing financial pressure to reduce unit offerings. In order to retain the breadth and depth of topics necessary to prepare graduates for the workplace, departments are seeking opportunities to enrol their students into physics units offered externally from other institutions. Few universities have the experience or expertise to offer Physics units in distance mode. For those that do, compulsory residential schools often mean students spend time away from their home institutions and face the added burden of travel expenses. Two universities on opposite sides of Australia, both experienced in Physics teaching and distance education, have now joined forces to address this issue.
Staff of Physics and Electronics at the University of New England (UNE), Armidale and Physics, Energy Studies and Nanoscience at Murdoch University, Perth have established a reciprocal arrangement. Students from Murdoch enrol in “Photonics”, a unit concerned with the study of light and its use in sensors and communications, and a second unit “Quantum Physics and Spectroscopy”, at UNE. In return, UNE physics students can enrol in “Physics of Materials” and “Nuclear and Particle Physics” at Murdoch University.

A key rationale for this collaborative arrangement is the necessity for science students to complement theoretical knowledge with hands-on practical experience. Within the hectic university timetable, lab time becomes limited, so in order to maximise the students' laboratory experience it is important that they have access to enough sets of top quality equipment, for long enough, to get a thorough understanding of the concepts they are investigating. Physics labs are no exception and as physics instrumentation is generally expensive, undergraduate labs are very expensive to resource. They are usually the first casualty of ‘economic rationalism’.
Both Murdoch and UNE have different approaches to dealing with laboratory experiments and this was perhaps the biggest issue faced by collaborating staff. Murdoch tends to send its external students an experimental kit, study guide and written laboratory instructions and then expects the student to get on with it. UNE approaches the problem of labs for off-campus students by bring them on-campus and providing an intensive residential school. For the first couple of years both sets of students were unhappy; UNE’s students because they perceived they were not receiving the same level of care they were use to and Murdoch students because they had to travel to Armidale NSW to do labs in what they considered was an external unit.
The approach to providing practical experience for students has now been ‘tuned’ yielding a significant improvement in student satisfaction. The UNE Physics Department has redeveloped the Photonics unit so that the experiments can travel. Murdoch University students now enjoy the 5-day residential school experience at home during the internal teaching period. UNE students enrolled in the Murdoch units have a set of equipment for their laboratory sessions dispatched to UNE for use in a ‘supervised’ residential school- again allowing them to conduct experiments during the internal teaching period.

UNE and Murdoch staff work closely to coordinate assessment tasks and arrange the transfer of equipment across Australia. Murdoch staff are the on-campus-contact for their students during the semester as are UNE staff for UNE students. The collaboration is successful because the roles and responsibilities of each university are well defined, there is good communication between the staff at both institutions and we are all working towards the common goal of maintaining a viable physics program at our respective universities.

 Getting the external units included in the both university’s degree programs was not a big problem thanks mainly to supportive Deans of Faculties. It did take time for the units to progress into the handbook and therefore for the students to know about them and enrol in them. However with the ongoing process of “Academic Renewal” at UNE it currently remains largely up to department staff to make students aware of the opportunities available to them. Hopefully this will be rectified in due course.

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Benchmarking Archaeology Degrees in Australian Universities

Associate Professor Wendy Beck (BSc (Melb), PhD (LaTrobe), University of New England.  Wendy has been interested in teaching and learning in Archaeology for twenty years, and has particular interests in Problem Based Learning. Her research is primarily in Australian Archaeology and World Heritage places.

Catherine Clarke BA, DipEd, (Adel.) GradDipLibraryStudies (USA), DipSocSci., MLitt, (UNE), Teaching & Learning Centre, UNE. Catherine has experience and qualifications in both Archaeology and education, including some 16 years experience in educational project management at the tertiary level, working as an educational developer in a range of project and disciplinary contexts. She is currently completing a PhD in education in Archaeology.

Developing collaboration in the discipline of archaeology
A major challenge identified for Archaeology teaching and learning in Australia is the perceived shortcomings in archaeological qualifications, which are variously seen as inconsistent and/or not suited to the goals of students or employers (See Figure 1).

  Employers Students Academics
Problem Not vocational enough Not clear what the qualification makes them fit for Not consistent enough between universities
What do we want to achieve? ‘Work ready’ qualification Qualification suited to their career goals Qualification standards that are clearly articulated and monitored
Benefits? Confidence in qualification and its professional standard Confidence to choose relevant qualification components and experiences Confidence in nature and level of learning outcomes all students should demonstrate
Figure 1: Some current perceptions of archaeological qualifications

The collaboration
A shared network of understanding within the discipline, which sets out the nature and level of student learning outcomes, is essential for developing common expectations of Archaeology graduates, both nationally and internationally. To address the problem of assuring comparability, a set of Archaeology achievements will be defined in terms of both generic and subject-specific abilities, at different benchmarked standards. 'Benchmarking’ is conceived of here as the disciplinary community, through dialogue and consensus, drawing up a set of general expectations about the standards for the award. This project will focus on the four year Archaeology Honours program, regarded as the fundamental level of achievement required for entry to the profession and higher degree research.

The project plans to achieve its purpose through implementing processes by which the discipline as a whole, with the direct involvement of many teaching staff, can discuss, endorse and participate in the standards building process as on ongoing discussion. Key groupings to pursue the project aims are:

Benchmarking Partners
All of the (10) current providers of Archaeology Honours degrees in Australia are the Partners, who will:

  • take part (either directly or through a nominee) in a benchmarking survey and associated workshops
  • provide feedback on project materials (standards) as they are progressively articulated in the project
  • communicate with their own academic units on progress and outcomes of the project.

Benchmarking Associates
Representative associates from institutions which also offer Archaeology units but not full Honours, will be Associates, who will:

  • take part (either directly or through a nominee) in benchmarking workshops on an optional basis
  • provide feedback on project materials (standards) as they are progressively articulated in the project
  • communicate with their own academic units on progress and outcomes of the project. Collaboration will be organised and maintained through the formation of project work teams.

Benchmarking Team
The Benchmarking Team will, under the general coordination of the project officer:

  • carry out detailed planning, analysis and document preparation
  • liaise with and survey the benchmarking partners
  • disseminate widely to stakeholders project documents and other relevant information.

Advisory Team
Commitment to the process and support for the project in the archaeological community and associations will be assisted by the Advisory Team, members of ANCATL (Australian National Committee for Archaeology Teaching and Learning). Their role is to:

  • provide scheduled feedback on project plans and directions
  • assist with research in selected areas as mutually determined with the Benchmarking Team
  • liaise with professional bodies and agencies on project aims and progress for the Benchmarking Team.

Factors for success
In our view successful collaboration involves:

  • Implementing methods for recognising areas of common interest
  • Providing forums for the discussion and negotiation of shared understanding
  • Articulating and disseminating shared understanding
  • Iterative review
  • Committed and timely project management.

Issues
The main issues before the project at the moment are articulating, addressing and resolving questions of difference and commonality in:

  • Use and value of benchmarking
  • Perceptions of what comprises the discipline and its aims
  • Socio/Professional context of archaeology
  • Institutional processes.