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Grant helps UNE German reach collaborating campuses

August 24, 2006

KerryDunne.thumb.jpgThe University of New England has won a Commonwealth Government grant of $195,000 to support the continuing development of a modern-language teaching program that is already delivering UNE German courses to students at two other universities.

UNE’s Associate Professor Kerry Dunne (pictured here), the leader of the project, said the Carrick Competitive Grant would allow the project team to develop innovative teaching material in the form of "podcasts" that students could download to a computer or MP3 player. These would be designed not only to teach the German language curriculum, she said, but to “foster independent learning in students doing much of their work over the Internet”. The University of Newcastle and James Cook University in north Queensland are the two universities collaborating in the project.

“As subjects with relatively low enrolment numbers, languages are vulnerable in the current tertiary-education climate,” Dr Dunne said. “Models such as ours (the ‘UNE Blended Model’) can ensure that low-enrolment subjects survive over a range of campuses.”

She explained that Newcastle and James Cook students followed the same program (course materials, assignments, exams, etc.) as UNE students, and that those studying on the Newcastle and Townsville campuses received some face-to-face teaching from local tutors. “It is important that people who chose to study on-campus should have some face-to-face teaching,” she said.

“They do much of their work online,” she continued, “including innovative activities such as ‘Webquests’ and interactive games. They also use the Internet to participate in language practice sessions with the wider student community.

“This 18-month grant from the Carrick Institute for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education will enable us to develop teaching ‘podcasts’ that contain built-in learning strategies. We need to foster students’ thinking about how they learn, and encourage them to share with other students the strategies that work for them. Through reflective practice, students become better independent learners. In addition, we will also develop a training protocol for online tutors. Tutor-style interaction – both cognitive and social – is an important ingredient of our ‘Blended Model’.”

The collaborative program, initiated by Dr Dunne in 2004 and supported by the Head of UNE’s School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics, Associate Professor Herman Beyersdorf, began the delivery of UNE German courses to Newcastle University students in 2005, and to James Cook students this year. The development and implementation of the program was funded by an initial 18-month grant from the Commonwealth Government’s Higher Education Innovation Program. “The grant recognised UNE’s outstanding track record in language teaching – including, of course, distance education – and our possession of the infrastructure necessary for providing a program at another institution,” Dr Dunne said.

She pointed out that aspects of the procedures developed with the Carrick grant – and the knowledge gained as a result – could be readily adapted and applied to the delivery of a wide range of UNE courses.

Posted by Jim Scanlan at August 24, 2006 04:11 PM