Scholarship in Teaching Funded Projects for

2007, 2008 & 2009

2009 Successful Applications

Exploring the teaching of ethics to the professions

Principal Investigators: Anna Corbo Crehan, Wendy Bowles, Lindy McAllister, Matthew Campbell

Summary Description: This project aims to determine the considerations that should inform best pedagogical practice in the area of professional ethics in light of the interdisciplinary context of professional practice. Such a context creates a number of questions, which need to be addressed in the teaching of professional ethics. To this end, the teaching of professional ethics across the various disciplines at Charles Sturt University will be explored using qualitative methodologies to capture current practice and the views of practitioners about both the current position of professional ethics within their respective curricilum and future opportunities for interdisciplinary subject development. As well as informing the current discourse at Charles Sturt University around the position and form of ethics education in professional education programs, this project will also provide a framework for a broader exploration through an ALTC grant application with other external partners.

Preparing students for international placements: developing students' cultural competence, ethical practice and global citizenship

Principal Investigators: Donna Bridges, Franziska Trede, Wendy Bowles, Stephen Loftus

Summary Description:Preparation for international fieldwork education placements plays a key role in successful placement experiences and student learning. Exposure to different cultures prepares graduates for global citizenship. This study will identify courses and subjects that offer international placements at CSU. It will engage academic staff in interviews about challenges involved and will map current preparation practices. Outcomes will include a discussion paper that will present the major issues found by the research, in literature and in interviews. It will discuss good preparation practice and teaching principles as identified in the literature and by CSU staff. The discussion paper will also inform professional education and practice based learning internal benchmarking marking projects at CSU in the future, and will ultimately inform policy. This study is strategic for CSU because it addresses CSU’s mission for excellence in education for the professions and the L&T plan objective 3 ‘enhancing the effectiveness of practicum and clinical education, including consideration for new models’.

How does students’ academic regulation develop over a problem-based learning year?

Principal Investigators: Sarah Hyde, Pippa Yabsley

Summary Description: The final year of the Bache[or of Clinical Science course was designed using problem-based leaming with. the goal of developing lifelong learning skills in our graduates. The aim of this investigation is to explore the deveropment of students' abilbity to regulate and direct their own learning given the nature of the course design in the final year. The research will explore how much students develop in this vein over the course of one year and how effective a PBL course design is in further developing self-regulated learning in the student cohort. This is also the first time problem based
learning (PBL) has been introduced in the school and so the results will also inform other staff and schools about the utility of this approach for achieving the specified aims.

The impact of ‘away from home’ compulsory pre-service practicum placements on student learning.

Principal Investigators: Ron Kerr, Brian Hemmings

Summary Description: This project will examine the extent to which social contingency factors affect the learning of pre-service students who are ‘away from home’ on a practicum. Research relating to practicum placements concentrates mainly on student learning in the workplace environment and virtually ignores outside contingencies. What is reported in the literature about ‘away from home’ placements considers either course retention or graduate career recruitment. Students who are forced to leave home to complete practicum placements take with them social contingencies. These could include: additional expenses, transportation and accommodation issues, personal health and safety concerns, and employment commitments. Whatever their situation while studying at home, these issues are exacerbated when away on placement. Consequently, there is a pressing need to examine how students’ lived experiences outside the practicum workplace impact on their learning and, in particular, how these students cope with these demands.

Pre-service teacher preparedness to use information and communication technologies for learning and teaching

Principal Investigators: Lincoln Gill, Barney Dalgarno

Summary Description: The purpose of this study is to continue and complete an investigation into factors that contribute to Primary Education students’ preparedness to use ICTs in the classroom, and the ways in which their attitudes towards and preparedness to use ICTs develops over the course of their degree. The study extends an earlier project carried out over two years as part of Lincoln Gill’s Master of Education research. What this initial stage of the study found through 3 sets of interviews with seven students was that the matter of teacher preparedness to use ICT for learning and teaching is somewhat complex, and that it is an evolving phenomenon. In this second stage of the study, the project will continue to employ a qualitative case study approach using semi-structured interviews, each of the students being interviewed a further three times during the final two years of their degree. The project will investigate the second half of the story. Firstly it will seek to uncover the effect of the participants’ increasing confidence as teachers on their practice while on placements and whether intent to use ICTs in the classroom translates to practice. Secondly, it will explore the outcomes in terms of ICT practice in the context of the development of increasingly complex understandings of ICTs, learning and teaching. This second stage will also further investigate and analyse attitudes and beliefs formed and framed both in class and on teaching placements, and seek to better understand the effect of teacher modelling of ICT use.

Evaluating ‘Connected Classrooms as a Teacher Education Strategy

Principal Investigators: Ninetta Santoro, Jane Mitchell, Wendy Hastings, Sara Murray, Marilyn Pietsch, Denise Wood

Summary Description: This project aims to develop and evaluate an innovative approach to teaching undergraduate teacher education students. The approach will involve the use of video-conference technology at CSU and NSWDET schools (Connected Classrooms) to facilitate observations of authentic classroom practice as part of a program of initial teacher education. The project will ascertain the value of such technology to assist student-teachers to build their knowledge of teaching practices in a diverse range of settings (for example, socio-economic and geographic), and where there are students from diverse backgrounds (for example, Indigenous students, gifted and talented students, special needs students, and those from a range of ethnic backgrounds). The project will also build stronger relationships with the profession through the development of collaborative partnerships between academics and teachers as site-based teacher educators. Data collection includes qualitative and quantitative methods such as individual interviews, questionnaires, field-notes and focus group discussions.

2008 Successful Applications

Critical and normative evaluation of the quality of ethics teaching in CSU Faculty of Business undergraduate distance based courses

Principal Investigators: Kay Plummer, Dianne McGrath, Daniel Murphy, Rob Macklin, Oliver Burmeister

Summary Description: The study will involve a systematic analysis of the ethics content in all undergraduate business subjects, as well as the pedagogies involved in delivering this content and a determination of whether the current content and teaching approaches align with best practice approaches identified in the literature. It will lead to recommendations on the incorporation into CSU undergraduate Faculty of Business programs of ‘best practice’ approaches to developing within students an awareness of the ethical dimensions of professional practice in the business field and a capacity to make sound ethical judgements.

Building capability for self assessment in work integrated learning

Principal Investigators: Cathi McMullen, Ian Braithwaite, Daniela Rosenstreich

Summary Description: This project brings together a range of key aspects of assessment in business education: (1) The importance in building capacity for self assessment - a critical capability for lifelong learning in a world of complexity and change; (2) The critical role of work integrated learning in preparing students for professional practice; and (3) The affordances that information and communication technologies offer for assessment. The aim of this project is study, reframe and reconstruct assessment practice in a collaborative way. As such the project can be described as a participatory action research project – a project where change is made after critical reflection. This approach takes into consideration the social nature of assessment practice and the institutional policies that shape assessment practice. The project design incorporates multiple stages each involving planning, acting and observing and replanning. It is envisaged that these learning designs for self assessment in a work integrated learning context would be capable of being adapted to non-business disciplines.

The Living Curriculum: Bridging the gap between the espoused and the enacted curricula

Principal Investigators: Elaine Duffy, Heather Latham, Annabel Matheson, Jan Manners, Julie de Sousa, Maryanne Mozer, Lyn Croxon, Jessica Biles

Summary Description: The project will engage academic staff to apply curriculum mapping in learning and assessment practice across five campuses and in the internal, distance and blended modes of study following a major review of the Bachelor of Nursing program.
This project will develop and implement a process of collegial discourse, enriched understanding, evaluation and critical reflection in a participatory action research design to bridge the gap between the espoused and the taught curriculum.
Staff will be supported to facilitate the mapping of each learning activity and assessment to the learning objectives of the subjects and the overall objectives of the curriculum. This program will include a series of forums, to facilitate a comprehensive quality assurance process across the curriculum. Evaluation, indicating that outcomes have been met, will include focus groups, questionnaires and thematic analysis of evidence in subject outlines and subject Interact sites.

Writing Groups: Fostering scholarship of teaching in communities of practice

Principal Investigators: Cathi McMullen, Zelma Bone, Deb Clarke

Summary Description: This project aims to enhance the capacity of staff in the Faculty of Business, particularly recipients of Faculty scholarship in teaching grants and early career researchers, to progress their research work in learning and teaching towards publication.

A writing group, focused around scholarship of teaching will be formed to encourage and support this activity. The three investigators, all of whom have experience in publishing in learning and teaching, will both facilitate and participate in the writing group. Importantly, the group will have access to a consultant with experience in both leading and publishing on writing groups, Associate Professor Alison Lee (UTS), who will assist in developing and sustaining the writing group’s activities across the year.

The project is framed as an action research project involving a cyclical process of planning, acting, observing and reflecting. In addition to developing the capabilities of those participating in the project, there is the potential to use the framework developed in this project to implement writing groups in other faculties at CSU.

Lessons from the ‘explaining voice’: Radio broadcasting as a model for effective and distinctive educational podcasting

Principal Investigators: David Cameron, Brett Van Heekeren, Michelle O’Connor

Summary Description:This project will evaluate the potential contributions to learning and teaching at CSU afforded by radio station 2MCE-FM. The station broadcasts to Bathurst and Orange, and is also available to a CSU-wide audience via an online service. In particular, the project will consider the benefits of developing audio learning materials based on the notion of the ‘explaining voice’ – a style of vocal presentation closely aligned to radio broadcasting traditions.

This pilot project aims to evaluate:

The extent and effectiveness of any past or current use of 2MCE-FM’s airtime and resources for learning and teaching;

The nature of potential uses of 2MCE-FM’s airtime and resources for learning and teaching across all campuses, including online streaming and podcasting;
The skill sets and resources required to produce and present audio learning materials;
Ways in which 2MCE-FM might contribute to training and support of staff to develop audio materials;
A small scale project evaluating staff and student perceptions of the utility and accessibility of audio learning materials, and exploring and evaluating a distinctive and effective CSU ‘sound’ for forms such as online streaming and podcasting.

Fish or fowl? Exploring the experience of the Honours year

Principal Investigators: Catherine Allan

Summary Description:Obtaining an Honours degree from the School of Environmental Sciences (SES) involves completing a nine month research project and associated subjects. Anecdotal evidence suggests that undertaking Honours is a very different experience from both course-based undergraduate study, and postgraduate research. There appears to have been little attempt to systematically understand the Honours year, and the few published works which deal with honours have a discipline, rather than pedagogical focus. The ethnographic research project described here seeks to better understand how Honours candidates experience their Honours year, with the aim of informing institutional support for future Honours students, and adding to the theoretical discourse on postgraduate study. This project has been operating (without funding) since 2004 (EHRC protocol # PN 2004/217 ) over which time the chief investigator has conducted 15 in-depth interviews with Honours students soon after they have submitted their thesis for examination

2007 Successful Applications

Feedback on learning: a study of staff and students’ perceptions, and the implications of these perceptions for measuring feedback quality

Principal Investigators: Jenny Kent, Will Letts, Marian Tulloch

Summary Description: This pilot study aims to help conceptualise the issue of feedback, which continuing low scores in course and subject evaluations have problematised, and thus improve our grasp of the helpfulness (or otherwise) of feedback on learning, in preparation for a University-wide study of how to improve the quality of the feedback we provide. It draws in all Sub-Deans (Learning and Teaching), because their participation is essential to building the parameters of the University-wide study. Focus groups will be used to identify the range of issues that require further exploration. The complete study should allow us to develop rationales for our feedback practices; ground our practices in shared staff/student understandings of the purposes and value of feedback, through a capacity to be more explicit about expectations on both ‘sides’; enliven our classrooms and levels of trust as a result and improve University performance on teaching quality measures in the longer term.

Evaluation and Development of Interactive Video Teaching (IVT) as a learning experience for remote learners

Principal Investigators: Ms Kerrie Cullis, Mrs Jeanette Thompson, Dr John Louis

Summary Description: This project will investigate student evaluations of IVT across five campuses of Charles Sturt University (CSU). The enquiry will strengthen an emergent Community of Practice among teaching staff. As Wenger (1999) suggests, communities of practice have pragmatic unifying concerns capable of generating innovation within organizations. Three research questions have been refined in consultation with sixteen current IVT lecturers:

Do video link lectures enhance the learning experiences of remote learners?
Do students at the remote site feel as included in the lecture process as the local students?
Is this mode of teaching more suited to interactive tutorial style classes than to the delivery of traditional lectures?

The findings will have implications for the effective and equitable provision of education across geographically diverse cohorts in Australia and overseas. The increase in Video Teaching facilities in primary, secondary and tertiary institutions makes this research into e-learning highly relevant and timely.

THE PBL JOURNEY: An action research approach for evaluating strategies to prepare academic staff for a Problem-Based Learning program

Principal Investigators: Jennifer Hyams, Sharanne Raidal, Peter Chenoweth, Joanne Connolly

Summary Description: A systematic evaluation will be conducted into the development, implementation and reflective appraisal of academic staff preparation and training for the Problem-Based Learning (PBL) curriculum within the School of Agricultural and Veterinary Sciences (SAVS) at Charles Sturt University (CSU). The implementation of PBL within SAVS affords a unique opportunity to document and explore the initial phases of staff development and implementation of PBL within a professional education discipline in Australia. Lessons learned from the Veterinary Program will have application to other professional disciplines contemplating the introduction of PBL at CSU, such as in the Bachelor of Clinical Science (in Year 3 and potentially the new Dentistry School) and in the wider tertiary education sector. The results from this project will provide impetus for sourcing additional external research funding which may be used to develop specific PBL training programs for academic staff.

From Global to Local: Transitional Experiences, Pedagogic Approaches and Professional Challenges amongst International Academic Staff at CSU

Principal Investigators: Dr. Sue Saltmarsh, Dr. Christopher Klopper, Dr. Jinghe Han

Summary Description: As Australia expands its share in global higher education markets, research and scholarship in teaching are increasingly impacted upon by transnational academic mobilities. This project will explore the transitional experiences, pedagogic approaches and professional challenges amongst international academics teaching at CSU. The project will consider:

global knowledges and teaching practices that international academics bring to bear in their local CSU classrooms
experience of transition to academic life at CSU, and its impact on the teaching effectiveness of international academics
ongoing professional challenges experienced by CSU academics working outside their country of origin

Insights generated by the project will enable CSU to develop a fuller picture of the impact of international academics on the university’s teaching and learning culture. The project will map the diversity of CSU’s academic workforce and its contribution of global expertise, pedagogies and productive change to scholarship in local teaching and learning environments.