2013 RMIT Teaching Awards

Posted by: Jon Hurford, Senior Advisor, College of Design and Social Context, RMIT University.

Professor Margaret Gardner, AO, Vice-Chancellor and President and the recipients of the RMIT Teaching and Research Awards in 2012. Click here to see a list of past winners.

It’s already March which means there’s a little over two months before nominations open for the 2013 RMIT Teaching Awards. Here at the tomtom we’ve written about the awards in the 2012 posts below:

Meredith Seaman’s: Teaching Awards – worth the paperwork?
and
Kym Fraser’s Applying for a teaching award next year? Start collecting your evidence this semester.

These two posts form an excellent knowledge base for RMIT staff who are thinking about applying for an award.

What comes out clearly in each of the above (and in my conversations with past applicants) is the value most participants felt in the process of reflecting on their practice and the importance of having a narrative to your teaching that is backed up by evidence. To bring it back to what you might be doing this month in your classes, examples of assessments that you have run with actual student outcomes displayed (de-identified and used with their permission) can make powerful examples in the evidence you supply with your application. The use of visuals and materials supplied on DVD is an option applicants are increasingly taking advantage of to display the achievements of teachers and learners.

Importantly, the awards are also open to professional and support staff. We all know those who may not teach but are crucial to the success of our students and Category P7 is especially relevant to those members of staff.

As the DSC’s coordinator for the awards, (click here for the Business and SEH coordinators) I wanted to grab some of the mental real estate that might be available at this time of year to advise staff of some of the key dates, categories and a couple of changes to the process for 2013 through a short series of FAQs:

How do I nominate?

You can nominate a colleague by contacting your college’s coordinator. You can also discuss your own application. In the DSC, these nominations will be forwarded to the Schools’ L&T Directors/Chairs. These nominations open20 May.

I’ve heard there will be peer review of teaching for Teaching Awards?

Yes, but for 2013 this will be a voluntary process. There are workshops being run for interested staff on 18 March and 10 May. As the Learning and Teaching page on the pilot states: “For 2013, review of teaching is being piloted and will be available on a voluntary basis to teachers who plan to apply for an RMIT Teaching Award. On request, two trained reviewers will review the intending applicant’s teaching and provide reports. These reports can then be used as evidence to support a teaching award application.” So you can think of peer review as another piece of evidence, just like your CES data and professional references. For more information, click here.

What are the categories for the awards?

Click on the following links to find out more about a particular category:

• The Vice Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award
• Award for Outstanding Achievement in Teaching and Research

• Category A – Teaching Excellence, Higher Education
  • A1 College of Science, Engineering and Health
  • A2 College of Design and Social Context
  • A3 College of Business
  • A4 Early career academic (Higher Education)
  • A5 Priority area – Teaching a diverse student body

• Category B – Teaching Excellence, TAFE
  • Category B1 TAFE Outstanding Teacher / Trainer of the Year Award
  • Category B2 Early Career Teacher / Trainer of the Year Award
  • Category B3 Outstanding Training Initiative of the Year Award

• Category C – Sessional Staff
  • C1 Outstanding Sessional Teaching Award (Higher Education)
  • C2 Outstanding Sessional Teaching Award (TAFE)

• Category P – Awards for Programs that Enhance Student Learning
  • P1 Widening Participation
  • P2 Educational Partnerships and Collaborations with Other Organisations
  • P3 The First Year Experience
  • P4 Flexible Learning and Teaching
  • P5 Innovation in Curricula, Learning and Teaching
  • P6 Postgraduate Education
  • P7 Services Supporting Student Learning
  • P8 Indigenous Education

What about team applications?

As long as all members are eligible, team applications are encouraged in categories A, B, C and P. Last year in the DSC, teams from the Schools of Art, Education and GUSS won awards.

Will I have to make a full application to the College?

No, in the DSC you will only have to address one criteria in your initial application. If you are selected as the College’s nominee you will be supported in writing the full application. There are also workshops scheduled for June to assist you in writing your application.

Okay, I’m interested or I know someone who would make a good nominee. What should I do next?

I’d love to hear from you. Getting an early start on the process can make it a lot more enjoyable. We can discuss what category might be appropriate for your nomination and I can put you in touch with past winners of the awards. Contact me to discuss the best use of your time in the upcoming months!

Do you have thoughts on the process of applying for a teaching award? We’d love to hear them in the comments section below!

Integrating library resources into your teaching

Posted by: Grazyna Rosinska, Liaison Librarian (School of Art, School of Media & Communication), RMIT University.

www.facebook.com/rmitlibrary
www.twitter.com/library_rmit
Link to Grazyna’s library subject guides

Last month, June Frost looked at some of the great physical resources and spaces on offer at RMIT and the information skills sessions run by library staff; if you missed it click here. I wanted to continue to look at this idea of developing information skills with a particular focus on just two services that the Library has acquired over the past couple of years, Lynda.com and the Kanopy Streaming Service. Both are available through the RMIT Library homepage through the ‘Databases’ link (or you can search for either as a keyword with our LibrarySearch function) and both provide you with high quality resources that you can link to course content or embed in Blackboard shells to allow easy student access. The real power of each might come from your own explorations and use of the materials though. Hopefully you’ll see uses for both as teaching tools and as professional development resources.

Lynda.com

Click on this image to go to the Lynda link for RMIT staff and students.

Lynda is a learning platform with thousands of sequenced and indexed videos available to all RMIT staff and students. The focus is on creative, business and technology skills so if you’re looking to start from scratch in a topic or maybe you’re brushing up on the latest version of a piece of software or a web tool, you’ll probably find relevant material on Lynda. Subject areas include:

• 3D
• Audio
• Business including Office and Google software
• Design
• Developer
• Photography and Video
• Web and social media

One thing that has impressed us in the library is the extensive tagging, time-coding and captioning of content. It means it’s very easy to dip in and find the answer to something. But it’s likely though you’ll stay to learn more as Lynda’s videos are delivered by engaging experts. The login you create with Lynda.com means that you can queue and track the courses you have viewed; you can use it off-campus and be working through a self-directed syllabus. So if we take an example that RMIT staff might be interested in, ‘Gmail for Power Users’, here is the course description:

In this course, Susan Metz shows how to personalize email, manage multiple accounts, and be more productive with the Google email service. The course offers tips and tricks for customizing Gmail to suit your needs; working efficiently with shortcuts; taking advantage of labels; integrating with Calendar, Google Docs, and social media; using voice and video chat; implementing time management in Gmail; and much more…

If you look at this course (screenshot at the right) you’ll find there’s a full transcript, and all of those topics with subheadings and the time the instructor spends on each topic. It’s easy to imagine how this could be a valuable self-study tool for staff and students alike.

Kanopy Streaming Service

Another resource that the Library has acquired is the Kanopy Streaming Service. Kanopy supplies audiovisual materials to tertiary institutions in Australia and New Zealand so right away you will be finding materials that have local context and/or local content. Instead of having a film or documentary on closed reserve as we would have done in the past, Kanopy allows high quality documentaries and films (just to give two examples) to be accessed by multiple students from multiple locations.

If you can’t find what you’re looking for there is a recommendation system where you can suggest a title to be acquired for RMIT. The screenshot below for instance shows a 25 minute video on the topic of critical thinking.  These videos can be linked through to your Blackboard shells or you can simply clip the relevant section of a longer piece.  If you’d like more information about Kanopy and Lynda head to Sourcing Online Teaching Materials at the RMIT website.

I hope that this has been useful in surfacing a couple of resources that are proving increasingly popular with academics and students. Don’t forget about the Library Subject Guides as a great starting point for discipline-specific information.

Share your comments about library resources and online materials in the comments below!

Peer and self-assessment

Copyright © RMIT University. Photographer: Margund Sallowsky.

Posted by: Dr Alex Radloff, Higher Education Consultant.

Peer and self-assessment use has been growing in Higher Education at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, as has the use of technology to support these forms of assessment. Peer-assessment refers to the process of assessing the quality of the products or outcomes of the learning of peers. Self-assessment refers to the process of assessing the quality of the products or outcomes of learning, or the act of learning, by the learner. Both kinds of assessment can be used as part of formative and summative assessment, either as ‘stand alone’, or in conjunction with teacher generated assessment. Academic staff who have used peer and self assessment report that:

• The skills are a requirement of many professions/jobs and are valued by potential employers.
• Using peer and/or self assessment skills demystifies the assessment process and makes it more accessible to learners.
• Students are provided with more frequent and detailed/richer feedback from more sources.
• Students develop analytical and critical skills needed to identify and use criteria and standards relevant to work in their discipline/profession. Learners engage more deeply /thoughtfully in learning and assessment tasks.
• The skills help students to increase their metacognitive awareness and control of learning including planning, monitoring and evaluating learning.

Academic staff who have used peer and self assessment also report:

• Resistance by students. Resistance is generally based on a lack of trust in the validity (does the assessment assess the stated or intended outcome?) and fairness of peer or self-assessment; a view that assessment is the responsibility of teachers and should only be undertaken by teachers, not learners; concerns about the capacity of learners to assess accurately; and concerns about possible accreditation requirements.
• Quality issues related to the reliability of the assessment (how consistent assessment outcomes are over time) when based on the judgments of learners and their ability to interpret and apply criteria and standards appropriately.
• Over-reliance on peer and/or self-assessment, especially for summative assessment purposes, to the exclusion of other forms of assessment can be an issue.
• Learners need training/support to understand and use peer and self-assessment effectively.
• The implementation of peer and/or self-assessment especially for large groups of learners, may require access to and the management of, specific technology and software.

Careful design of peer and self-assessment can address the problems and issues identified above. The steps in designing peer and self-assessment follow the typical assessment cycle, namely Purpose of assessment; Selection of assessment tasks; Setting criteria; Administering assessment; Scoring the assessment; Grading the assessment; and Feedback. To increase the effectiveness and efficiency of peer and self-assessment:

• Make clear the rationale, purpose and expectations of the planned approach with students and colleagues. Address common concerns concerning validity, reliability, fairness and trust.
• Involve students in developing the assessment criteria. Consider involving students in the design of the assessment activities as well, if appropriate.
• Make clear how peer and/or self-assessment will be used in conjunction with teacher-assessment, if it is to contribute to a final grade.
• Provide systematic training and practice for students in using the assessment criteria and standards with examples of products representing different levels of performance.
• Give students clear, written instructions and guidelines on the assessment process including timelines, deadlines, and any consequences (rewards and/or penalties) associated with the process.
• If using technology for assessment, ensure that it works and that students know how to access and use it and what to do if they need help.
• Check how the assessment process is working and intervene if needed to provide feedback and coaching.
• Keep records of assessment outcomes and monitor how peer and self-assessment compares to teacher assessment over time.
• Review the outcomes in terms of learning, performance and satisfaction from both the students’ and the teacher’s perspectives, and revise design and implementation if needed.
• Collaborate with colleagues to discuss different strategies and to share experiences.

Want to know more?

Past posts on peer assessment and peer learning can be accessed by clicking here or on the tags to the right. The following is a short survey of the academic literature relevant to the topic:

Bell, A., Mladenovic, R., & Price, M. (2012). Students’ perceptions of the usefulness of marking guides, grade descriptors and annotated exemplars. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, DOI:10.1080/02602938.2012.714738

Examines students’ views of the usefulness of exemplars, grade descriptors and marking criteria for reflection and learning, or for understanding the assessment task.

O’Donovan, B., Price, M., & Rust, C. (2008). Developing student understanding of assessment standards: A nested hierarchy of approaches. Teaching in Higher Education, 13, 205–217.

Discusses the importance of involving students in the assessment process and describes different ways to help students understand assessment requirements.

Higher Education Academy. Self and peer assessment. Post Graduate Certificate in Professional Development.http://www.glyndwr.ac.uk/cpd/pgcpd/assessment_and_giving_feedback/self_and_peer_assessment/assessment_issues.html

What are your views on peer assessment and peer learning? Share them in the comments section below!

Designing collaborative learning is worth the effort

Posted by: Thembi Mason, Senior Advisor, Learning and Teaching, College of Design and Social Context, RMIT University.

What is an NGLS?

Copyright © RMIT University. Photographer: Margund Sallowsky.

Technology enabled active learning spaces or ‘new generation learning spaces’ are becoming more widespread in universities.  They are designed to support a more student-centred approach to teaching and learning, leading to active learning and higher engagement in students. While new learning spaces vary in their exact characteristics, they typically are:

• carefully planned to facilitate interactions between students
• designed to allow for flexible use and arrangement of furniture
• constructed to enable the teacher to both teach and facilitate the class from anywhere in the room and
• technology-enabled to encourage active learning both within and outside of the classroom.

How do they help learners and teachers?

So how does a teacher use the space so that students can build their own learning rather than relying on the ‘telling’ expertise of the teacher?

Associate Professor Nick Blismas from the School of Property, Construction and Project Management kindly agreed to let me sit in on one of his classes to see how he teaches in these new learning spaces. It was a great class. There were six students on each table. Nick had to monitor the numbers as students would try to pile into big groups but eventually they were evenly distributed around the room.

Students were learning about procurement methods – that is what procurement method would be chosen before a building was built to ensure that the time, cost and quality were optimally met. The right procurement method was critical to the eventual outcome of the project and Nick had designed a procurement game to build discipline knowledge so students could make more informed choices and decisions.

Hang on, what’s a ‘procurement game’?

Copyright © RMIT University. Photographer: Thembi Mason.

He split the student groups evenly into ‘developers’ and ‘clients’. Then he gave the clients information about the type of construction they were to build and asked them to embellish on the basic information and criteria for development he had given. For example, one group was to build a supermarket but they needed to factor in underground car parking. Meanwhile, the developers reviewed the different types of procurement systems. Students could use the wireless network to tap into the internet if they needed to find additional information.

Fifteen minutes later, clients met with developers and outlined their building project. Developers asked questions to clarify some of the criteria. Then the developers had to select the appropriate building approach for their client. The client could then respond as to whether they thought it was the right approach for them and why. All the groups presented their work at the end of the class and all the students voted on whether they thought it was the right approach for each building project.

It was a fantastic class to observe; the students really got into the role-playing. There was heated debate between clients and developers over ideas and you could see that the students were really learning discipline knowledge from each other. As students discussed the issues, Nick facilitated the class by walking around to the different groups and offering advice if he was asked or pushing the thinking when he thought a group was stuck. He was also formatively assessing them as he went.

‘Playing the whole game’

It was a fabulous way to facilitate collaboration and it was made possible because of the learning space – this type of activity would not have worked in a lecture theatre.  Designing activities and class work as Nick did does take some time, however, the students were engaged, they loved it, they learnt from each other and I am sure they will remember that class and what they learnt in that class when they are working in the field.

Nick had designed a lesson that David Perkins would say ‘played the whole game’ of their future professional lives in a practice session. Procurement was seen in context and seen as relevant by the students. They had to problem solve and deal with arguments about their selections. Clients had to listen to developers as they argued for the method they wanted to use. The process allowed students to practice their negotiating skills and improve their interactive skills for dealing with future clients. It showed them that often there is no certainty about any particular procurement method but taught them what each might offer them depending on the context for the development. For the students this was a taster of their future careers as project managers.

Have you got a story about using new learning spaces? Please comment if you do and let us know what worked for you and your class.

The librarian, the academic, the student…

Posted by: June Frost, Liaison Librarian, University Library, Bundoora West Campus, RMIT University.

I recently came across this description of my library colleagues in an Oxford University student’s column:

When it is not attacking other creatures librarianus spectacalus spends most of its time catching the unsuspecting rectangular creature bookius bookius in the strange firm linear webs with which they line their mountain caves.  But librarianus does not eat bookius bookius; instead they catch it for the strange effect it produces when they stare at its underbelly.

Academic librarians are a strange breed of people. Of course, there are variations within the breed: some like to catalogue and organise information, some like to present information by using the latest gadgets, some like to verbally impart information (sometimes endlessly it seems), some (just a few) like to keep information secret, but almost all of us love to share information in one way or another. It’s not difficult to distinguish the key word here – INFORMATION! We love the opportunity to share information with our colleagues, teachers, lecturers and researchers and with our families (much to their dismay). Here is a typical exchange:

- How was your day, Mum?
- Oh, really good today. Did you see my post on Facebook about RMIT Library’s new LibrarySearch function? It’s just like doing a Google search except you find all the Library resources on one topic including e-books, e-articles and streaming video?
- Oh, great Mum – hope you didn’t make it public!

But most of all, we love sharing information with students who at certain times of the year, are our biggest fans.  It might be that they’ve never used a certain database or that they hadn’t realised they can access a resource from their iPad or maybe they’ve hit a tricky concept in one of their courses. They might not know it, but they’re usually looking to fill a gap in their information skill-set.

Information skills

Information /ɪnfəˈmeɪʃ(ə)n/ (International Phonetic Alphabet)

• facts provided or learned about something or someone: a vital piece of information.

(from Oxford Dictionaries Online.)

Traditionally, information skills sessions takes place in the first few weeks of a semester, when students are reeling from information overload.  It doesn’t matter whether they are starting a TAFE certificate or beginning research for a PhD, there’s a lot to take in.  The Library homepage contains a plethora of – you guessed it—INFORMATION, and students need to learn the skills to navigate (we also love the word ‘navigate’) their way around and through this information, until ‘Bingo!’ they find what they are looking for.  To get to the ‘Bingo!’ moment, it’s quite understandable that most students will need some help in: firstly, recognising they need information; secondly, selecting the right method to find the information; thirdly, finding ways to locate, disseminate and store the information; fourthly, synthesising and evaluating the information; and lastly, deciding on the methods to present the information.

Time Pressures

A study by Kent state University Researchers which collected data from higher education institutions across 17 states in the USA found that the biggest barrier to including information skills (or IL: information literacy) in teacher education programs was time:

It makes sense that barriers remained consistent whether educators were trying to integrate IL skills or IL standards. Since most courses consist of well-established content, it is not surprising that lack of time and lack of their own expertise in IL were identified as major hurdles. These responses highlight another possible benefit of collaboration; a librarian, looking at a course from a different perspective, may be able to suggest ways that existing content and assignments can be slightly modified to include important IL skills and knowledge. Kovalik, et al (2010) p.62

I suspect the same might be said of RMIT or indeed across the nation.  It does take time for course coordinators and lecturers to firstly talk to or LIAISE (another of our favourite words) with librarians, schedule in an information skills session and then find a time to incorporate it into the busy course schedule, but it will be worth the effort.

The Solution

One solution to this may be to rethink the timing of library skills sessions in the academic year.  How about scheduling a session mid-semester when the student’s first major assessment piece is being delivered?  If the librarian has access to the assignment question and themes, the skills session can then be tailored to the question and the students can walk away with not only skills but some actual resources to set them on their way. For flexibility, we could also ensure this information is available online for students who prefer to learn from their bedroom floor…speaking as someone with teenage children.

For myself, I will happily impart information to students at any time of the year, but by trying to strategically place these research sessions at the right point of the calendar, it may produce better outcomes.

Maybe it could further cement our libraries as AWESOME, SICK and KOOL (yes that’s how they spell it now!) places on campus.  Or to use the IPA, /ˈɔːs(ə)m/, /sɪk/ and /kuːl/.

Share your thoughts about campus libraries and information skills in the comments below!

Reference:

Kovalik, C. L., Jensen, M. L., Schloman, B., & Tipton, M. (2010). Information literacy, collaboration, and teacher education. Communications in Information Literacy, 4(2), 145-169. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/865649314?accountid=13552. 1 February 2013

Grounding graduate attributes

Posted by: Margaret Blackburn, Senior Advisor, Strategic Learning and Teaching Initiatives, Office of the Dean, Learning and Teaching, Academic Portfolio, RMIT University.

(cc) MorgueFile.com

As publisher and presidential advisor C. D. Jackson said, ‘Great ideas need landing gear as well as wings’. The notion of graduate attributes is a pretty abstract one, so the challenge is to provide some landing gear and make them mean something to students and teachers. Otherwise, the risk is that they’ll stay in orbit somewhere in the educational stratosphere and make little impact on the ground.

At RMIT, we have a set of six graduate attributes. They are skills or qualities that we expect all of our graduates, whatever their specific program, will have had the chance to acquire to a suitable level. We want them to be work ready, to be active and lifelong learners and so on. But what does this mean for the curriculum and for how it is delivered, learned and assessed?

Before we go further, let’s agree that there’s confusion over the range of terms used to describe these qualities. Aren’t we talking about learning outcomes here?  Well, yes, but we are now being more precise with outcomes at different levels. At the course level, we have outcomes that are assessed to and gained by successful completion of a course. But outcomes also exist at the program level (what we used to call ‘program capabilities’) and above and informing these are RMIT’s graduate attributes.

(cc) MorgueFile.com

As a tertiary environment at RMIT, we also use the TAFE sector’s labels of competencies, elements, performance criteria and employability skills.

In the new program guide matrix developed to meet AQF requirements, program capabilities are now referred to as program learning outcomes. The matrix enables teachers to align program learning outcomes with the overarching graduate attributes and in the other direction, down to the courses of the program. Work is currently underway to complete this.

TEQSA now requires institutions to demonstrate that all of their graduate attributes, including English language competency, have been attained. Why this new focus on outcomes? The tertiary context has changed radically in recent years. There can be a haphazard quality to the bundle of skills, knowledge and attributes students graduate with. Degrees from different institutions vary in terms of minimum standards as well as content. The kaleidoscope of higher participation rates, funding pressures, more varied models and modes of learning, have all led to a new focus on outcomes and how to measure them.[1] Research also points to a need to re-examine the role of graduate attributes when it comes to standards.

To breathe life into graduate attributes in curricula, in teaching and learning and in assessment, the key is context. To use the word ‘generic’ to describe graduate attributes suggests that we can ‘unplug’ graduate attributes entirely from a specific discipline or teaching area.  But Anna Jones’ research[2] indicates that they are not ‘generic’ or ‘super skills’ that exist beyond disciplinary contexts or professional and vocational fields. Graduate attributes don’t exist in a vacuum. Rather, they start with the content and culture of particular disciplines or fields. A key question is: what is the essence of this discipline? Jones found that the ways that graduate attributes are taught and learned depend on the conceptual frameworks, language, assessment practices, technologies and even physical settings that form the heart of particular disciplines, professions and vocations. As de-contextualised statements, they don’t work. This makes sense to the classroom teacher or lecturer who ideally is also a practitioner or has a deep knowledge of their industry counterparts.

Although the terminology is the same for different disciplines and fields, for example ‘work ready’, graduate attributes have different meanings and are weighted differently in every field or profession. For example, a ‘work ready’ engineering graduate will prioritise in-depth technical competence in at least one engineering discipline. In media and communications, work readiness is primarily about creative practice and critical reflection. ‘Innovative’ in fashion and design disciplines may spotlight imaginative and creative endeavours whereas in business disciplines, innovation is about designing new rules and processes that improve traditional business models. In a business degree, ‘cultural and social awareness’ should include an understanding of how enterprise and business activities affect groups and individuals. In social sciences, however, to understand social justice issues in professional settings may be an essential aspect of this attribute.

Where do you start to bring graduate attributes down to earth?  One approach is, as per the King of Hearts, ‘begin at the beginning’. Consider what gives your discipline or field its identity, its own distinguishing stamp. What are the essential skills or qualities that you want your graduates to have? For example, in economics, one central skill is to be able to apply economic tools to problems. Another might be to analyse macroeconomic data to make predictions. A third might be to be able to develop further economics expertise by being an independent and active learner. But does your economics degree, as you’ve sketched it out, prepare students for the cultural and social implications of their profession? If you use the graduate attributes as a screen while listing those essential skills and qualities, you may find that elements you thought peripheral have a place in ensuring that every RMIT program has the best chance to develop a well-rounded graduate.

As you make your list then, use the graduate attributes as a reference point to help you frame the skills and knowledge of your discipline or profession. Then you are ready to express the skills and qualities it contains in a set of five or six broad program learning outcomes that take into account AQF levels.

How do those program learning outcomes shape the curriculum at course level? They are the starting point for drafting detailed course level learning outcomes that spell out in detail what students will learn and be assessed on in each course. Course learning outcomes must fit with both program learning outcomes and the overarching graduate attributes. Mapping all three across the entire program is helpful. The point is that graduate attributes don’t mean much on their own. They’ll gain their real meaning and impact from the detailed context provided by the learning outcomes at both program and course level.

(cc) MorgueFile.com

Finally, and critically, structure your students’ learning activities to help them actively engage with the course learning outcomes. Ask yourself: how will this activity, exercise, problem, online discussion exercise, help my students get to grips with a specific learning outcome? And how will the elements of my assessment program enable students to show that they have met the learning outcomes at a particular level? By taking a holistic approach to all three elements, learning outcomes, learning activities and assessment, you’ll ensure that those elusive graduate attributes come back to earth.

Share your comments on graduate attributes in the comments below!

References:

[1] Royce Sadler, (2012) Assessing and assuring graduate attributes, keynote address to AAGLO Conference, July 19.

[2] Anna Jones, (2012) There is nothing generic about graduate attributes: unpacking the scope of context, Journal of Further Education, DOI:10.1080/0309877X.2011.645466

2012 in review for the teaching tomtom

Posted by: Jon Hurford, Senior Advisor, Learning and Teaching, College of Design and Social Context, RMIT University.

Here’s what the WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared for this blog:

“4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 18,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 4 Film Festivals…”

Attractions in 2012

These are the posts that got the most views in 2012.

• 1 Feedback from students – who cares?
• 2 The use of metaphors in teaching and learning
• 3 Social media as professional development – can it work for you?
• 4 Why didn’t I get a High Distinction?
• 5 7 things I learned from being a student or Statistics is really Mean

We’ll be back with more in three weeks time!

A short break for the tomtom… Back in 2013!

Posted by: John Benwell, Principal Advisor, Learning and Teaching, College of Design and Social Context, RMIT University.

(cc) MorgueFile.com (http://www.morguefile.com/creative/hotblack)

What a great year it’s been for the teaching tomtom! We’ve seen a steady increase in our readership and our follower numbers with last month, November, our busiest on record.

We’ll be taking a short break over the holidays but we’ll be back on 7  February 2013 with a special guest post from Margaret Blackburn on RMIT’s Graduate Attributes.

In the meantime, don’t forget you can read all of our posts in the Archive section to the right and you can use the Search bar for specific keywords or authors.

On behalf of the team at the teaching tomtom I’d like to thank all of our readers and contributors and wish you all a safe holiday period! - John.

 

Teaching Vietnam-style

Posted by: Rebekha Naim, L&T Group & School of Media and Communication, Design and Social Context College, RMIT.

© Rebekha Naim, 2012

I am teaching professional lighting design and technology to production staff at HTV in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam this week. It is my first experience in a city outside Australia, I cannot understand the language and the culture here is completely foreign to me, however the art of teaching remains the same. As a teacher, I also love learning, so this new experience is, of course, wondrous!

I explain concepts, techniques and the craft of lighting, using diagrams and pictures on Prezi, showing on-line video’s via Clip Grab and using the old-fashioned whiteboard occasionally. I also follow a booklet, which we produced at our client’s request, which has been translated into Vietnamese. I have a very skilled interpreter, so I pause after every few minutes and Kevin repeats my words in Vietnamese. While his English is excellent, he is not a lighting technician and he asks others in the room to help him with industry lingo. The learners have also been asking me many questions via Kevin, which shows their interest and the need for someone like me to train them.

© Rebekha Naim, 2012

It has also been a real boon having a few lighting TV professionals from HTV in the class with me helping to demonstrate the technology. They efficiently and professionally assist the class to learn about lighting techniques and  also ask me for more detailed information. I am relieved at how easily I am able to teach the basics to some learners and more complex concepts to others at the same time.

The technical HTV staff undertaking this training are not all planning to be lighting technicians. Many are doing the training as they have been asked to by their managers. Their managers are having a break from training and are looking for fresh ideas, approaches and techniques themselves. So I give basic exercises to get beginners up to speed and enjoying themselves, then spend some time with the experienced lighting crew as they show me their equipment and methods and ask for my advice and recommendations. It is a combination of knowledge sharing, analysis and application on a number of levels.

Learners have been patient and supportive of one another and are not as shy as what I was led to believe. If they want to know something, they ask me. If they don’t agree with me, they challenge me. For staff who will never probably touch lighting again, I am teaching them new ideas and concepts, giving them a go at lighting set-ups and an appreciation of lighting techniques, technology and protocol, which will enable them understand the intricacies of lighting for TV, regardless of their role within the company. For the more skilled lighting technicians, I am challenging some of their current methods and approaches, affirming others, and they are networking with colleagues and deepening their knowledge, skills and capabilities.

I am teaching alongside Greg Long, a new teacher and a highly skilled audio consultant and technician (amongst other things). He is teaching the audio aspects of the course. I think he is learning a lot from watching me teach – something that not many new TAFE teachers get the opportunity to do. As I am observing his teaching, it is making me reflect on how I teach and enabling me to offer him some advice too.

Teaching in a foreign country is much easier than I anticipated, as is travelling

© Rebekha Naim, 2012

overseas. I found out two weeks ago that I would be here this week so it has been a steep learning curve; luckily I have a wonderful family and superb staff like Shae Allen, who organized my trip; expert advice from well-travelled and supportive colleagues and the support of managers like Simon Embury and Professor Barbara de la Harpe.

The Victorian TAFE system is now operating in dramatically changing seas as we steer our own financial ship with high compliance masts. Stephen Joyce, the Manager of Business Innovation in the TAFE School of Media & Communication, RMIT University and the School’s TAFE Director, Glenn Blair, are actively and very successfully, taking our cutting edge creative media programs to the world. As a 40-year old travel virgin and TAFE teacher, I have taken the challenge to teach overseas and it has been well worth the effort.

The rewards of this venture will be significant, both to HTV and RMIT University. It’s hard to think of a a better fit in terms of alignment to RMIT’s strategic plan of being global, urban and connected.

Well done to Stephen and Glenn for looking beyond our shores and let’s welcome industrious companies from around the world demanding high-level PD for staff company growth and renewal from education experts across the globe.

Share your thoughts about teaching in another culture (or any other aspect of Rebekha’s post) in the comments section below!

The use of metaphors in science and technology

Guest Post by Rod Pitcher:

Last year Rod wrote one of our most popular posts on the use of metaphor in conveying concepts to students. He followed this one with a post pitched to PhD students, Metaphors and the PhD. A PhD student in Education at The Centre for Higher Education, Learning and Teaching at the ANU, he returns to the tomtom to share some thoughts on the role of metaphors in science and technology.

Metaphors are widely used in science and technology. They allow explication of new research results by comparing them with old or existing knowledge, which may or may not be scientific.

The old knowledge might be something that is held by everyone. The new knowledge is held by a few who must make it clear to any interested others so that it can be spread throughout the scientific or technological community. Science communicators do the same for the public. Often the ideas are so new that without using metaphors it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to explain them.

How to explain a new invention

A new technology, like a computer network, needs to be explained to people who have no knowledge of it. In this case, one can talk about the ‘web’ of the network, comparing it to a spider’s web, either by drawing diagrams or showing the person a real spider’s web. Thus the principal involved in how the points of the network are interconnected can be made clear to anyone who has ever seen a spider’s web.

Using metaphors in teaching science and technology

There is the need then for compelling and accurate metaphors to communicate the new knowledge to students. The use of metaphors makes it easier for an audience to grasp the principal of the thing.

Metaphors not only allow the knowledge to be passed on but also help in developing the vocabulary of the discipline, since many of the words used in science and technology are directly derived from the metaphors used to illustrate the concepts.

For instance, in talking about electricity we can describe electrons passing along a wire and make the comparison to water flowing through a pipe. The words ‘flow’ and ‘current’ used to describe moving water help us to describe electrons moving through a conductive metal. Thus in learning this metaphor the student has also learnt some scientific words. In the case of ‘current’ there will be more for students to learn and of course many ways in which the the uses of ‘flow’ and ‘current’ differ depending on the discipline.

This process is not unique to the sciences. We can see how other fields use scientific processes as metaphors for human or social phenomena. When we talk about a ‘groundswell’ of public support, a candidate’s ‘momentum’, or a particular issue as a ‘lightning rod’, we are using images from the scientifically described world as a kind of descriptive shorthand.

What about bad metaphors?

The provisional nature of knowledge means that that we should also be careful about how we use metaphors; reminding students that ‘the map is not the territory’. Bohr’s model of the atom and Copernicus’ model of the Solar System were better metaphors than what had come before, but they remain provisional representations — they are now used for beginners in the field, steps along the way to more complex analogies.

Why so many metaphors in science and technology?

Science and technology, then, are prolific users of metaphors. It’s difficult to imagine any part of science or technology that doesn’t use them somewhere in its explanations of what is going on.

You can imagine a number of metaphors that might apply in a description of the luminescence depicted on the left. Depending on the audience’s existing knowledge of chemical reactions and electronic states, a teacher or lecturer could convey the processes at work here in a number of ways. Describing Bohr’s ‘planetary model’ of the atom would be a useful first step.

Metaphors allow explanations to be constructed that can be understood by anyone with a little effort. If all teaching of science or technology, or spreading of information about their results, was done using only non-metaphorical scientific words there would be a lot less people who had any knowledge of what it all means, including many scientists and technologists!

Rod Pitcher is a PhD student whose focus of study is the metaphors that researchers use when describing their research. His last two posts on the tomtom can be found here. and here. Rod’s profiles are at:

http://chelt.anu.edu.au/people/rod-pitcher and http://scholar.google.com.au/citations?hl=en&user=4vZSJT4AAAAJ

The images in this post are from a 2008 series of photographs, “Fluorescence of lucigenin” © RMIT University. Photographer: Margund Sallowsky.

Share your thoughts about the use of metaphors in your discipline in the comments below!